Prepare for distutils.version being removed in Python 3.12

[felixfontein]

SUMMARY

distutils has been deprecafed and will be removed from Python's stdlib in Python 3.12 (see https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0632/). This PR replaces the use of distutils.version.LooseVersion and distutils.version.StrictVersion with LooseVersion from the vendored copy of distutils.version included with ansible-core 2.12 (ansible/ansible#74644) if available, and falls back to distutils.version for ansible-core 2.11 and before. Since ansible-core 2.11 and earlier do not support Python 3.12 (since they use LooseVersion itself in various places), this incomplete fix should be OK for now. Also, the way this PR works (by adding a new module_utils version that abstracts away where LooseVersion comes from), it is easy to also fix this for ansible-core 2.11 and earlier later on.

ISSUE TYPE

• Bugfix Pull Request

COMPONENT NAME

Various modules and plugins

[ansibullbot]

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[felixfontein]

CCing the remaining maintainers: @mheap @oolongbrothers @opoplawski @overhacked @paytroff @pilou- @quidame @rainerleber @saranyasridharan @scodeman @sealor @sh0shin @shinuza @sm4rk0 @tbielawa @tleguern @toabctl @tuxillo @waheedi @willthames @zanssa

[patchback]

Backport to stable-3: 💔 cherry-picking failed — conflicts found

❌ Failed to cleanly apply a2f72be on top of patchback/backports/stable-3/a2f72be6c8d36c0b836755093e2837518b2e5869/pr-3936

Backporting merged PR #3936 into main

1. Ensure you have a local repo clone of your fork. Unless you cloned it
   from the upstream, this would be your origin remote.
2. Make sure you have an upstream repo added as a remote too. In these
   instructions you'll refer to it by the name upstream. If you don't
   have it, here's how you can add it:

   $ git remote add upstream https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general.git

3. Ensure you have the latest copy of upstream and prepare a branch
   that will hold the backported code:

   $ git fetch upstream
   $ git checkout -b patchback/backports/stable-3/a2f72be6c8d36c0b836755093e2837518b2e5869/pr-3936 upstream/stable-3

4. Now, cherry-pick PR Prepare for distutils.version being removed in Python 3.12 #3936 contents into that branch:

   $ git cherry-pick -x a2f72be6c8d36c0b836755093e2837518b2e5869

   If it'll yell at you with something like fatal: Commit a2f72be6c8d36c0b836755093e2837518b2e5869 is a merge but no -m option was given., add -m 1 as follows intead:

   $ git cherry-pick -m1 -x a2f72be6c8d36c0b836755093e2837518b2e5869

5. At this point, you'll probably encounter some merge conflicts. You must
   resolve them in to preserve the patch from PR Prepare for distutils.version being removed in Python 3.12 #3936 as close to the
   original as possible.
6. Push this branch to your fork on GitHub:

   $ git push origin patchback/backports/stable-3/a2f72be6c8d36c0b836755093e2837518b2e5869/pr-3936

7. Create a PR, ensure that the CI is green. If it's not — update it so that
   the tests and any other checks pass. This is it!
   Now relax and wait for the maintainers to process your pull request
   when they have some cycles to do reviews. Don't worry — they'll tell you if
   any improvements are necessary when the time comes!

🤖 @patchback
I'm built with octomachinery and
my source is open — https://github.com/sanitizers/patchback-github-app.

[patchback]

Backport to stable-4: 💚 backport PR created

✅ Backport PR branch: patchback/backports/stable-4/a2f72be6c8d36c0b836755093e2837518b2e5869/pr-3936

Backported as #3941

🤖 @patchback
I'm built with octomachinery and
my source is open — https://github.com/sanitizers/patchback-github-app.

[felixfontein]

@briantist @Andersson007 @zanssa thanks a lot for reviewing this!

[felixfontein]

Manual backport to stable-3 in #3942.

[rockaut]

@felixfontein may I asked for community.zabbix: do I understand correctly. We may use the builtin class which falls back to distutils in older releases. But we might get problems in some unsupported version combinations?

And do I interpreted this correctly that this class will only be in the community.general collection and not in the core Ansible?

[felixfontein]

@felixfontein may I asked for community.zabbix: do I understand correctly. We may use the builtin class which falls back to distutils in older releases. But we might get problems in some unsupported version combinations?

Yes. Right now the only unsupported comination (to my knowledge) is Python >= 3.12 with ansible-core < 2.12.

And do I interpreted this correctly that this class will only be in the community.general collection and not in the core Ansible?

Yes. But you can copy it into your collection as well. If you only use LooseVersion in one place you can solve this differently, but if you use it in more than one place it's IMO better to have this extra file. (This is how some other collections did it: ansible-collections/ansible.posix#304, ansible-collections/amazon.aws#599, ansible-collections/community.vmware#1165, ansible-collections/community.crypto#353, ansible-collections/community.docker#258, ansible-collections/community.mysql#267, ansible-collections/community.postgresql#178, ansible-collections/kubernetes.core#314)

[rockaut]

Thx. We have now done it like this too.

[felixfontein]

According to ansible-collections/community.docker#267, this change breaks the modules which use it on Ansible < 2.9.20 and ansible-base < 2.10.8 since it relies on ansible/ansible#73832.

[felixfontein]

#3979 adds some documentation on this.