Remove distutils.cfg from Python forumlas

[uranusjr]

Not sure where best this should go, I’m entirely green to Homebrew. Sorry if I mess up things.

I am one of the maintainers of pip, the Python package installer. We are recently informed that Homebrew is currently using distutils.cfg to configure package installation schemes, and we believe it is best for Homebrew to remove the usage.

Python is currently deprecating distutils, and will remove the module entirely in 3.10 (PEP 632). As a part of the transition, pip is moving all its current distutils usages to the sysconfig module instead, and a user recently reported pip would no longer work correctly with Homebrew-compiled Python after the transision. This is due to Homebrew’s usage of distutils.cfg, which is no longer supported in sysconfig.

The distutils.cfg file (and its various variants) has long been disfavoured by Python core maintainers, and the recommendation, if redistributors wish to provide custom install schemes, has been to directly patch distutils and sysconfig instead. This is the current approach taken by all Linux distributions that we have contact with, and the community is working toward providing better support to the patching process (b.p.o-43976). I’m recommending Homebrew to also migrate away from the distutils.cfg usage, since it is going to break while the community continuously migrate away from distutils, and stop working entirely when Python 3.12 lands, and join the conversation with other Python redistributors to improve sysconfig to support Homebrew’s needs.

[carlocab]

Thanks, @uranusjr. I've opened Homebrew/homebrew-core#76621 to track this properly.

[SMillerDev]

Please make a pull request with your suggested fix and I'll gladly review it.

[uranusjr]

I would love to except I don’t actually have Homebrew installed anywhere 🙂 I’ll try to create an installation and see if I can come up with something. But if anyone else wants to do it, I can tell you exactly what lines to patch as well.