Breaking change: virtualenv: error: unrecognized arguments: --wheel=bundle on >=20.31.0

[kfreezen]

Issue
My CI/CD pipelines broke on release of 20.31.0 due to the removal of an embedded wheel.

When using poetry to manage dependencies, certain old dependencies cause my build process to crash due to removal of an embedded seeder wheel in virtualenv. This seems to occur with a dependency of python-json-logger<0.2 (which is, admittedly, six years old)

Workaround
There are two workaround options

1. Update your six year old dependencies to something more modern, you lazy cretin.
2. Pin virtualenv to <20.31.0 when installing poetry, or whichever build tool you are using.

The first workaround is the more recommended option. I went with a combination of both approaches, being a halfways lazy cretin.

Last comment about the issue: If you want to close this as won't fix, go ahead, I just want to hopefully save some other developer the headache of tracking down why their ancient CI/CD pipeline suddenly broke on May 5, 2025.

Environment

I used the docker image python:3.11-alpine to replicate this issue.

#11 0.187 Package              Version
#11 0.187 -------------------- -----------
#11 0.187 build                1.2.2.post1
#11 0.187 CacheControl         0.14.3
#11 0.187 certifi              2025.4.26
#11 0.187 cffi                 1.17.1
#11 0.187 charset-normalizer   3.4.2
#11 0.187 cleo                 2.1.0
#11 0.187 crashtest            0.4.1
#11 0.187 cryptography         44.0.3
#11 0.188 distlib              0.3.9
#11 0.188 dulwich              0.21.7
#11 0.188 fastjsonschema       2.21.1
#11 0.188 filelock             3.18.0
#11 0.188 idna                 3.10
#11 0.188 importlib_metadata   8.7.0
#11 0.188 installer            0.7.0
#11 0.188 jaraco.classes       3.4.0
#11 0.188 jeepney              0.9.0
#11 0.189 keyring              24.3.1
#11 0.189 more-itertools       10.7.0
#11 0.189 msgpack              1.1.0
#11 0.189 packaging            25.0
#11 0.189 pexpect              4.9.0
#11 0.189 pip                  25.1.1
#11 0.189 pkginfo              1.12.1.2
#11 0.189 platformdirs         4.3.7
#11 0.189 poetry               1.8.5
#11 0.189 poetry-core          1.9.1
#11 0.189 poetry-plugin-export 1.8.0
#11 0.189 ptyprocess           0.7.0
#11 0.189 pycparser            2.22
#11 0.190 pyproject_hooks      1.2.0
#11 0.190 RapidFuzz            3.13.0
#11 0.190 requests             2.32.3
#11 0.190 requests-toolbelt    1.0.0
#11 0.190 SecretStorage        3.3.3
#11 0.190 setuptools           65.5.1
#11 0.190 shellingham          1.5.4
#11 0.190 tomlkit              0.13.2
#11 0.190 trove-classifiers    2025.5.1.12
#11 0.190 urllib3              2.4.0
#11 0.190 virtualenv           20.31.1
#11 0.190 wheel                0.45.1
#11 0.191 zipp                 3.21.0

Output of the virtual environment creation

13.64 usage: virtualenv [--version] [--with-traceback] [-v | -q] [--read-only-app-data] [--app-data APP_DATA] [--reset-app-data] [--upgrade-embed-wheels] [--discovery {builtin}] [-p py] [--try-first-with py_exe]
13.64                   [--creator {builtin,cpython3-posix,venv}] [--seeder {app-data,pip}] [--no-seed] [--activators comma_sep_list] [--clear] [--no-vcs-ignore] [--system-site-packages] [--symlinks | --copies] [--no-download | --download]
13.64                   [--extra-search-dir d [d ...]] [--pip version] [--setuptools version] [--no-pip] [--no-setuptools] [--no-periodic-update] [--symlink-app-data] [--prompt prompt] [-h]
13.64                   dest
13.64 virtualenv: error: unrecognized arguments: --wheel=bundle

[gaborbernat]

#2884