Build from source fails with older versions of setuptools (<72.2.0) because of PosixPath types returned from .glob

[fergusfinn]

The following dockerfile should successfully install flashinfer, but the build fails

FROM pytorch/pytorch:2.4.0-cuda12.4-cudnn9-devel

ENV TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST="8.0 8.6 8.9 9.0a"
RUN apt update && apt install -y git
RUN pip install setuptools packaging ninja build

RUN git clone https://github.com/flashinfer-ai/flashinfer.git --recursive && \
  cd flashinfer/ && \
  echo "TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST=${TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST}" && \
  TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST="${TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST}" FLASHINFER_ENABLE_AOT=1 python3 -m pip install --no-build-isolation --verbose --editable .

Error is

    File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.11/site-packages/torch/utils/cpp_extension.py", line 1142, in CUDAExtension
      return setuptools.Extension(name, sources, *args, **kwargs)
             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/extension.py", line 134, in __init__
      super().__init__(name, sources, *args, **kw)
    File "/opt/conda/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/extension.py", line 110, in __init__
      raise AssertionError("'sources' must be a list of strings")
  AssertionError: 'sources' must be a list of strings
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error

The problem is that the .glob function in setup.py returns PosixPath objects (on posix systems), which setuptools < 72.2.0 (link) can't handle. The default installed setuptools with this dockerfile is 68.x

Updating the setuptools versions is a workaround

FROM pytorch/pytorch:2.4.0-cuda12.4-cudnn9-devel

ENV TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST="8.0 8.6 8.9 9.0a"
RUN apt update && apt install -y git
RUN pip install setuptools==75.6.0 packaging==23.2 ninja==1.11.1.3 build==1.2.2.post1

RUN git clone https://github.com/flashinfer-ai/flashinfer.git --recursive && \
  cd flashinfer/ && \
  TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST="${TORCH_CUDA_ARCH_LIST}" FLASHINFER_ENABLE_AOT=1 python3 -m pip install --no-build-isolation --verbose --editable .

Older versions of setuptools could probably be supported in flashinfer by casting the collected paths in setup.py to strings.

If its not a priority, hopefully this issue saves someone else some frustration