setup_requires being installed when running help or checking version

[ghost]

Originally reported by: jakirkham (Bitbucket: jakirkham, GitHub: jakirkham)

---

When running something like python setup.py --version or python setup.py --help, this results in the dependencies in setup_requires being installed. This seems a bit odd as we aren't trying to build anything yet. It would be nice if this was skipped in situations like this.

---

• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/issue/474

[ghost]

Original comment by RonnyPfannschmidt (Bitbucket: RonnyPfannschmidt, GitHub: RonnyPfannschmidt):

---

setup_requires declares what is needed to propperly run setup.py

in some cases they are required just to find the version

[jaraco]

setup_requires is deprecated #2823. One should use pep517 to load metadata (example).