[Libguestfs] distutils use in hivex libdnet libnbd (and more) [was: Re: Help needed triaging build failures without distutils]

Hey Pythonistas. The Python standard library distutils module will be removed from Python 3.12+ https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/

As preparatory work, we build all python packages in a Copr repository with Python 3.11 sans distutils: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/python/python-without-distutils/ I've rebuilt all the failed builds again and also in a control-group copr: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/g/python/python-with-distutils/ 250 packages that failed to build without distuils but succeeded with distutils need to be examined and categorized into various different groups: - package uses distutils only if sys.version_info < (3, 12) -- this is OK but still fails here - package uses distutils unconditionally and the package needs to be fixed - package uses another package that uses distutils unconditionally and the dependency needs to be fixed I suspect most of the packages will fail to build with Python 3.12 (planned for Fedora 39, change proposal TBD). The python3-setutpools package provides a distutils module [^1], so sometimes "simply" adding BuildRequires: python3-setuptools might workaround the problem.

rjones hivex libdnet libnbd