fix: use copy(v) which works also on str, instead of v.copy() which doesn't

[corneliusroemer]

resolves #5416
resolves #3404 (closed because stale, not because fixed)

Bug was possibly introduced in #3344

@msarahan @isuruf I think you are best acquainted with this part of the code base. I don't really know what's going on here - but this workaround fixes the bug for my use case.

Checklist - did you ...

Will fill out checklist if it's likely this will get merged

• Add a file to the news directory (using the template) for the next release's release notes?
• Add / update necessary tests?
• Add / update outdated documentation?

[conda-bot]

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In order for us to review and merge your code, please e-sign the Contributor License Agreement PDF. We then need to manually verify your signature, merge the PR (conda/infrastructure#965), and ping the bot to refresh the PR.

[codspeed-hq]

CodSpeed Performance Report

Merging #5417 will not alter performance

_{Comparing corneliusroemer:fix-str-copy (0b2e9e3) with main (a7b885e)}

Summary

✅ 3 untouched benchmarks

[travishathaway]

@conda-bot check

[travishathaway]

@corneliusroemer,

Thanks for opening this. While we wait for the others to chime in, it would be really nice if you could add both a regression test for this and a news file entry. The regression test could go in tests/test_variants.py. We just need to test the _combined_spec_dictionaries function.

The tricky part is finding the exact data to feed into the function to recreate the stacktrace, but I hope that you might be able to generate that seeing that you can recreate this issue yourself.

Let us know if you need any help with that.

[corneliusroemer]

Thanks @travishathaway! Happy to add news and try to get a test working - just wanted to check I'd not be wasting my time.