exp: test what breaks if we drop 3.8 from minor versions

[aignas]

Work towards #2704

[gemini-code-assist]

Summary of Changes

Hello @aignas, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request experimentally removes support for Python 3.8 by updating the version definitions. The primary goal is to assess what components or tests might break as a result of dropping this specific minor version, in preparation for potential future deprecation. This change impacts the available Python versions for builds and ensures that the system no longer references Python 3.8.

Highlights

• Python 3.8 Version Removal: The entry for Python version '3.8.20' has been removed from the TOOL_VERSIONS dictionary, which specifies download URLs and SHA256 hashes for various Python builds.
• Minor Version Mapping Update: The mapping for Python '3.8' to '3.8.20' has been removed from the MINOR_MAPPING dictionary, indicating that Python 3.8 is no longer considered a supported minor version.

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[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request begins the process of dropping Python 3.8 support by removing its definitions from python/versions.bzl. The changes correctly remove the 3.8.20 version from TOOL_VERSIONS and the 3.8 mapping from MINOR_MAPPING. These changes are correct and align with the PR's goal.

As this is an experiment to see what breaks, other areas to investigate will be CI configurations for Python 3.8 and any remaining 3.8-specific files. I also noticed an example in a comment in python/versions.bzl (lines 40-51) that still uses Python 3.8.10; updating this to a supported version would be a good follow-up to avoid confusion.

[aignas]

hmmm, it looks like the situation is the same, I guess we need to start bumping the rules_protobuf or others to ensure that the 3.8 references are no longer there.