Windows v0.3 users hit two transcription failures with models installed:
- WhisperX: "Transcription produced no segments. No module named 'pkg_resources'"
- Whisper PyTorch fallback: "No ASR backend is ready. … set OMNIVOICE_PRELOAD_TTS_ASR=1"
Shared root cause: whisperx / faster-whisper import `pkg_resources` at runtime,
and setuptools 80+ DROPPED the bundled pkg_resources. The existing pin
`setuptools>=75` therefore resolved to 82.0.1 — which has no pkg_resources — so
`import whisperx` fails. That both breaks WhisperX transcription and makes its
is_available() return false, which is why every backend reports "not ready" and
the engine asks for the PyTorch fallback (the user's PowerShell env var never
reached the GUI-launched app, a separate red herring).
Fix: pin `setuptools>=75,<80`. Verified: <80 resolves to 79.0.1 which ships
pkg_resources; 82 does not. `uv lock` changed only setuptools (82.0.1→79.0.1).
This fixes BOTH errors — WhisperX imports again, so it's available and the
fallback is no longer needed.
Adds tests/test_pkg_resources_available.py to guard the pin from regressing.
Full suite 602 passed (incl. the new test), 0 failures.
Co-authored-by: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
