Add custom build backend for parallel NetCDF4

[stubbiali]

Introducing an in-tree build backend which programmatically detects whether NetCDF4 supports parallel I/O, and if so adds MPI4Py to the list of build dependencies. The custom backend is a very thin wrapper around the original Setuptools backend.

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✅ stubbiali
✅ jswhit
❌ jswhit2

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[ZedThree]

You might want to report which nc-config it's trying to run. Currently the Windows builds are failing with FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified which doesn't include the path, annoyingly!

[stubbiali]

Many apologies, this PR has fallen out of my radar for too long... So far, CI on Windows fails since nc-config cannot be found. May be the PATH needs to be modified before trying to pip-install the package? Unfortunately, I don't have a Windows machine at disposal to do proper debug offline.

[stubbiali]

After the recent strip of commits (BTW thanks @jswhit for updating the branch!), our application codes using netcdf4 now fail with The MPI_Comm_dup() function was called before MPI_INIT was invoked. The culprit seems to be c07584f. Any idea? Please ignore this comment, there were some issues in our setup, now everything works fine.

[jswhit]

The windows wheel builds are failing because nc-config only works on linux and macos.

[stubbiali]

Thanks for the clarification @jswhit and sorry for overlooking it. The code now relies on utilities fetched from setup.py to inspect if the C library has parallel support enabled. This should guarantee portability across all OS.