"pip is looking at multiple versions of {package_name}" INFOs obscure actual error

[vanschelven]

Description

When package resolution is "hard", many of the following messages may be spammed to the logs:

INFO pip is looking at multiple instances of the following message are spammed to the output {package_name} determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.

The problem is that these messages keep getting spammed, even after an actual ERROR occurs

INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of pandas to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of djangorestframework-datatables to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pillow>=9.0.0 (from reportlab) (from versions: none)
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of requests to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of cfenv to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of sqlparse to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of asgiref to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of whitenoise to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of pytz to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of <Python from Requires-Python> to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.
INFO: pip is looking at multiple versions of django to determine which version is compatible with other requirements. This could take a while.

The actual error is especially hard to spot when pip isn't run from a terminal, but as part of some CI/CD tool (no coloring)

Expected behavior

I'd expect the ERROR to be the final message, so that I'll see it immediately when reading bottom-to-top (which is the usual order when debugging)

pip version

22.0.4

Python version

3.9

OS

any

How to Reproduce

I haven't been able to cleanly reproduce this yet

Output

No response

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct.

[vanschelven]

The fact that this is hard-to-reproduce is presumably caused by #11572

[notatallshaw]

There is an open approved but not merged PR to be more transparent about what is happening here: #11169

[vanschelven]

There is an open approved but not merged PR

is it? a cursory scan of that PR seems to suggest it's about displaying what's going on when actually collecting, but I think the INFO statements I'm running into are part of the backtracking mechanism itself

[notatallshaw]

Hmm yeah fair enough actually, I've not tested it with your example.