I've been using setuptools_scm for years now and have never had any problems with it (I don't maintain any high-profile packages like pywikibot, though). Maybe a switch to it, or something similar, instead of reimplementing versioning in pywikibot itself, could be a solution?

Hmm, pip install -e . and flit install -s work, python setup.py install does not work. It ends with the same error ("error: The 'pywikibot==3.0.20200508' distribution was not found and is required by pwbtest").

In T253719#6172489, @Dvorapa wrote:

Okay, so I've tried your repo from https://github.com/mineo/pwbtest . I got the same error, but I noticed you use setup.py develop which is not a recommended practice afaik. So I've tried pip install -e . instead and everything worked like a charm.

Using setup.py develop these days is literally like asking for a trouble from my point of view, it is also not recommended by Python developers. These days PEP 517 and 518 make the use of setup.py install and develop effectively deprecated.

In T253719#6168842, @Dvorapa wrote:

The 'pywikibot' distribution was not found and is required by the application

The fallback to PKGINFO seems not working in your case. But why?

In T253719#6168454, @Dvorapa wrote:

In T253719#6168009, @Xqt wrote:

mw 1.14-1.18 is still supported with the current release. I think you can Always use "python2" release for older mw versions.

Ah, no, the error message is still Page [[wikidata:-1]] doesn't exist. which is not useful.

Probably, but I don't see a button to close it.

Ping?

Is there some place I can read more about the cause of this? At the moment it's not clear to me what you mean by "bot initialisation needs to be done after import is completed" - at which point is the import considered completed (or not)?

And about T54564: is there really any difference between not raising NoPage anymore and not raising IsRedirectPage anymore?

Isn't T68067 just about redirects between Wikidata items (like Qabc redirects to Qxyz) which wouldn't matter for this bug?