How to use Markdown in long description rather than plain text

[selivan]

When I upload a package manually using twine, description on pypi is parsed as correct markdown.

When I use pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish inside github action , description on pypi is displayed as plain text.

setup.py:

setup(
long_description=open("README.md", 'r').read(),
long_description_content_type='text/markdown',
...

Complete repository where I got this problem: https://github.com/selivan/kibana-backup-simple/

[selivan]

Never mind, this was because of using python 3.5. With 3.8 my manual action works fine with markdown, your probably also will work fine.

[webknjaz]

This action only uploads what you've built before calling it. It doesn't do anything to the metadata.
Based on the symptoms you described, it's not related to the Python version either. Besides, this action runs in an isolated container so whatever Python you use in your workflow does not influence the Python version in our container.
This happens when you use [outdated setuptools]https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/history.html#v36-4-0) that does not support the Markdown long description MIME type.
Older Pythons ship older setuptools by default but that does not prevent you from updating setuptools.
So the right answer is: update setuptools to a version higher than 36.4.0. Whether you also update Python does not matter in this context.

[selivan]

@webknjaz That is all true, but for actions/setup-python@v2, which is github recommended way of using python in actions, if you use it with python-version: 3.5, you get old setuptools. And even pip install --upgrade setuptools doesn't fix that, no idea how that is possible.

[webknjaz]

I don't see any proof of that. https://github.com/selivan/kibana-backup-simple/runs/1401771382?check_suite_focus=true#step:7:24 only shows that setuptools was old w/o any indication that pip install -U setuptools was ever present there.

[webknjaz]

Ah, I see what's happened: https://github.com/selivan/kibana-backup-simple/runs/1402167630?check_suite_focus=true#step:6:5. You're upgrading setuptools after invoking setup.py sdist. So it uses the old version and only then you update it.

[selivan]

@webknjaz I thought that new setuptools are required on twine upload step, but error appears on setup.py sdist step, it makes sense. Thanks for the explanation 👍

[webknjaz]

Yep. Twine doesn't use setuptools. It just uploads what's already been created, as is.
P.S. FWIW it's better to use a proper PEP517 build front-end for building dists instead of calling setuptools directly: https://github.com/pypa/build.

[selivan]

Thanks, I'll look at it.