Schlich/issue970

[schlich]

Closes #932 and #970

This pull request introduces several significant changes to the project's build system, dependency management, and configuration files. The most notable updates include transitioning to pyproject.toml for project metadata and configuration, adding a GitHub Actions workflow for building Python wheels, and simplifying setup.py by delegating metadata to pyproject.toml. These changes aim to modernize the project's packaging and testing infrastructure.

Build System Updates:

• Added a new GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/python-package-conda.yml) to build Python wheels across multiple operating systems (Ubuntu, Windows, macOS) and upload them as artifacts. This includes support for ARM builds on Linux using QEMU.

Dependency Management:

• Updated ci/conda_host_env.yml to include gcc as a dependency, ensuring compatibility with the updated build process.
• Transitioned dependency and metadata definitions to pyproject.toml, including build requirements (setuptools>=61.0) and runtime dependencies like numpy, scipy, and pandas.

Configuration Modernization:

• Migrated project configuration from setup.cfg and pytest.ini to pyproject.toml, consolidating settings for tools like pytest and flake8. [1] [2]

Simplification of setup.py:

• Refactored setup.py to remove metadata definitions and streamline the extension-building process using a dedicated get_extensions() function. Metadata is now managed in pyproject.toml. [1] [2]

[wasade]

Thanks!

[mataton]

Github now has native ARM runners, you can see our implementation in scikit-bio/2232. If you find that QEMU takes a long time during the workflow, including ubuntu-24.04-arm in the os matrix will use the new runners.

CI does not look like it's passed

[mataton]

Closing in favor of #996