`unimport` crashes on py3.12 due to `distutils` removal

[mxr]

Repro steps:

Environment (from here):

• sys.version: '3.12.0 (main, Oct 2 2023, 12:03:24) [Clang 15.0.0 (clang-1500.0.40.1)]'
• os.name: 'posix'
• sys.platform: 'darwin'
• platform.system(): 'Darwin'
• platform.python_implementation(): 'CPython'
• sys.implementation.name: 'cpython'
• sysconfig.get_platform(): 'macosx-14-arm64'

$ cat example.py
import sys
print('hello world')

$ pip freeze | rg unimport
unimport==1.0.0

$ unimport example.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/mxr/tmp/venv3.12/bin/unimport", line 8, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
             ^^^^^^
  File "/Users/mxr/tmp/venv3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/unimport/__main__.py", line 4, in main
    from unimport.main import Main
  File "/Users/mxr/tmp/venv3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/unimport/main.py", line 6, in <module>
    from unimport import commands, utils
  File "/Users/mxr/tmp/venv3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/unimport/commands/__init__.py", line 1, in <module>
    from unimport.commands import options
  File "/Users/mxr/tmp/venv3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/unimport/commands/options.py", line 5, in <module>
    from unimport.config import Config
  File "/Users/mxr/tmp/venv3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/unimport/config.py", line 14, in <module>
    from unimport import constants as C
  File "/Users/mxr/tmp/venv3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages/unimport/constants.py", line 2, in <module>
    import distutils.sysconfig
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'

---

See https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.10.html#distutils-deprecated for more info

[hakancelikdev]

Hi thanks for the issue but

officially, unimport does not yet support versions after Python 3.10.
Wouldn't this fix be a bit pointless when no development has been made yet? It would be better to develop support for Python3.11 and Python3.12 first.

[mxr]

Do you mind clarifying? I believe unimport already works on py3.11 (at least tox -e py3.11 passed and the wheel is not limited to <py3.10), so supporting it would simply require changing CI parameters. And if desired, supporting py3.12 can happen with the 2 PR's I have open.

[mxr]

Phrased another way - if we don't want to support py312 then the right thing is to configure that in python_requires (currently we allow an install but crash at runtime)

[hakancelikdev]

If all packages support Python 3.11 and 3.12, we can make the necessary changes in Unimport and provide support for these versions, there is no problem with this.

Do you want to do this job or should I do it?

[mxr]

I don't know what you mean by "if all packages". According to https://endoflife.date/python python3.11 and python3.12 are supported officially by Python maintainers

I can update this project to run in CI for python 3.11

[hakancelikdev]

When I say all packages, I mean other 3rd party packages that unimport uses.

[hakancelikdev]

You don't need to do anything additional for now, I will check your PR.

[mxr]

I think we are mixing up two things

A) Whether unimport runs under python3.11+?
B) Whether unimport can process syntax available in python3.11+?

(A) is enforced by setting python_requires. Since unimport sets python_requires = >=3.6, users expect that the tool runs under all of those versions. One way to resolve this bug report is to remove usage of distutils in favor of other libraries. Another way is to set a ceiling on python_requires and keep using distutils

(B) does not have a standard way of enforcement. At the time of the bug report in #291, the match statement (new to py310) could not be processed by libcst even though unimport does run on py310. One way to solve this class of issue is to add a new target_version argument to unimport in order to be explicit/implicit about which syntax you support

I opened this ticket in response to issue (A) but it sounds like you want to resolve both (A) and (B)? What I can do is check if the dependencies run on py311 and/or set a ceiling for python_requires if you feel this better guards against surprises