distutils is deprecated

[alugowski]

FYI, distutils (and setup.py) are deprecated and will be removed in Python 3.12. See https://docs.python.org/3.12/whatsnew/3.12.html

I've been impressed by scikit-build-core. https://github.com/scikit-build/scikit-build-core

[eriknw]

+1000 to moving to a new build system such as scikit-build-core or meson-python.

We're actually using setuptools, not distutils, so the title of the issue isn't quite accurate, and Python 3.12 probably shouldn't break us. Still, I'm happy to try to make things more modern.

In python-graphblas we've moved everything to pyproject.toml. Since it's pure Python we still use the setuptools.build_meta build system and have a minimal setup.py.

@alugowski, between this issue and your comment in #64 (comment), I think it's clear we share the same "ideal" target state: automatically building wheels on major platforms via cibuildwheel using scikit-build (and +1 if Windows can support complex). This is actually one of our highest priorities.

@alugowski, any help you're able to offer here is greatly appreciated. I'd be thrilled if you can take the lead on this effort (if you'd like to), and I/we can off help as we're able. I have a little bit of experience with cibuildwheel. Feel free to join the python-graphblas weekly call or join our discord (#graphblas channel) to help us coordinate or to ask questions.

[alugowski]

I've been working on it since the weekend and got it pretty much working: #66

[alugowski]

I'm happy to help with cibuildwheel, but I'm not eager to take on a scikit-build-core conversion. Especially since it sounds like it's not absolutely necessary.

[eriknw]

I think we can close this issue. We have modernized to use pyproject.toml with setuptools.build_meta backend, and we automated building wheels with cibuildwheel (thanks for that @alugowski!).