Remove use of deprecated ‘distutils’ library

[bignose-debian]

Python versions from 3.10 onward deprecate use of ‘distutils’ (in PEP 632), and it will be removed from Python 3.12.

This project should remove the option for ‘distutils’, and commit to use only the recommended ‘setuptools’ for building the package.

[bignose-debian]

I have implemented changes to fix this issue, in branch wip/issue/253/distutils-deprecated of my personal fork repository.

The branch merges cleanly to current 'master' branch.

[lino]

Thank you for your contribution.

I think with the move to pdm this should be obsolete.

If I'm mistaken, please yell.

[bignose-debian]

I think with the move to pdm this should be obsolete.

If you mean that this project will cease using Distutils entirely, and instead build using PDM, then yes I think that will resolve this issue.

I see in commit 6159bbcb that the build system changes to:

[build-system]
requires = ["pdm-backend"]
build-backend = "pdm.backend"

which avoids Distutils for build.