Re: [PATCH v2] docs/conf.py: Remove usage of distutils

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

On 04/03/2024 14.04, Thomas Huth wrote:
> The macOS jobs in our CI recently started failing, complaining that
> the distutils module is not available anymore. And indeed, according to
> https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/ it's been deprecated since a while
> and now likely got removed in recent Python versions.
> 
> Fortunately, we only use it for a version check via LooseVersion here
> which we don't really need anymore - according to Repology.org, these
> are the versions of sphinx-rtd-theme that are currently used by the
> various distros:
> 
>   centos_stream_8: 0.3.1
>   centos_stream_9: 0.5.1
>   fedora_38: 1.1.1
>   fedora_39: 1.2.2
>   freebsd: 1.0.0
>   haikuports_master: 1.2.1
>   openbsd: 1.2.2
>   opensuse_leap_15_5: 0.5.1
>   pkgsrc_current: 2.0.0
>   debian_11: 0.5.1
>   debian_12: 1.2.0
>   ubuntu_20_04: 0.4.3
>   ubuntu_22_04: 1.0.0
>   ubuntu_24_04: 2.0.0
> 
> So except for CentOS 8, all distros are using a newer version of
> sphinx-rtd-theme, and for CentOS 8 we don't support compiling with
> the Sphinx of the distro anymore anyway, since it's based on the
> Python 3.6 interpreter there. For compiling on CentOS 8, you have
> to use the alternative Python 3.8 interpreter which comes without
> Sphinx, so that needs the Sphinx installed via pip in the venv
> instead, and that is using a newer version, too, according to our
> pythondeps.toml file.

FWIW, here's a CI run with CentOS 8:

  https://gitlab.com/thuth/qemu/-/jobs/6309310171#L65

As you can see, it uses Python 3.8 with sphinx_rtd_theme 2.0.0, so I think 
we should be fine here, indeed.

  Thomas