The problem is that we use pipx in the images to install renku, which uses a different environment than where requirements.txt dependencies end up in. So pinning in requirements.txt has no effect on the pipx install.
Doing /home/jovyan/.local/pipx/shared/bin/pip install setuptools==57.5.0 in the Dockerfile before the entry that installs renku works. But it seems a bit hacky, I’m not sure if there’s a better way to install something in the shared environment used by pipx.
e.g. adding a RUN /home/jovyan/.local/pipx/shared/bin/pip install setuptools==57.5.0 here should work: renku-project-template/Dockerfile at master · SwissDataScienceCenter/renku-project-template · GitHub