Installation issue - pkg_resources missing

[emma-harding]

Hi

I am trying to install mictools on Ubuntu 24.04.4 LTS following your instructions, however I have the following error:

$ pip install mictools

Collecting mictools
  Using cached mictools-1.1.4-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.1 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: Click>=5.1 in ./miniconda3/lib/python3.11/site-packages (from mictools) (8.2.1)
Collecting matplotlib>=1.2.0 (from mictools)
  Using cached matplotlib-3.11.1-cp311-cp311-manylinux2014_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.whl.metadata (80 kB)
Collecting minepy>=1.2 (from mictools)
  Using cached minepy-1.2.6.tar.gz (496 kB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... error
  error: subprocess-exited-with-error
  
  × Getting requirements to build wheel did not run successfully.
  │ exit code: 1
  ╰─> [20 lines of output]
      Traceback (most recent call last):
        File "/home/biol0238/miniconda3/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pyproject_hooks/_in_process/_in_process.py", line 389, in <module>
          main()
        File "/home/biol0238/miniconda3/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pyproject_hooks/_in_process/_in_process.py", line 373, in main
          json_out["return_val"] = hook(**hook_input["kwargs"])
                                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/home/biol0238/miniconda3/lib/python3.11/site-packages/pip/_vendor/pyproject_hooks/_in_process/_in_process.py", line 143, in get_requires_for_build_wheel
          return hook(config_settings)
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/tmp/pip-build-env-18z1g30m/overlay/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 333, in get_requires_for_build_wheel
          return self._get_build_requires(config_settings, requirements=[])
                 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
        File "/tmp/pip-build-env-18z1g30m/overlay/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 301, in _get_build_requires
          self.run_setup()
        File "/tmp/pip-build-env-18z1g30m/overlay/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 520, in run_setup
          super().run_setup(setup_script=setup_script)
        File "/tmp/pip-build-env-18z1g30m/overlay/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 317, in run_setup
          exec(code, locals())
        File "<string>", line 3, in <module>
      ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pkg_resources'
      [end of output]
  
  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
ERROR: Failed to build 'minepy' when getting requirements to build wheel

Apparently setuptools recently had an update (Feb 2026) which removed pkg_resources from its dependencies (update here). I tried fixing setuptools to version 70 and 80 (pip install setuptools==70.0.0), both of which had the same issue.

I am trying to install mictools inside a miniconda environment running python 3.11.