Library is not compatible with Python 3.12

[benoit74]

At least pkg_resources has been removed in 3.12, making this library not compatible with this new Python version.

I will propose a PR, please assign me this issue if you don't mind.

[noumar]

Hi @benoit74 ,

Thanks for the issue. I was actually working on updating the library last year.

Please see #15 . It moves CI to Github Actions from TravisCI. It also has minor fixes to get things working without breaking compatibility.

I've been intending to release one last version (0.4.6) that still supports Python 2.6 & 2.7.

After that, starting with v0.5.0, I've been planning on dropping Python 2 support. At that point these changes can be done.

Unfortunately I'm not actively using or developing on the library anymore but PR's are welcome!

[benoit74]

Hi, unfortunately I've realized that there was a lot of work needed due to the still present compatibility with Python 2. I'm currently looking into more active libraries which are more inline with the range of Python versions we are supporting (i.e security and bugfix versions, 3.8 to 3.12 currently).

[C0rn3j]

Python 2.6 has been EOL for TEN YEARS.

People using EOL Python 2.7 from 2010 will not be interested in 2024 dependencies.

Please don't bother with supporting ancient dead Python versions and instead focus on releasing for the modern software stack, people using EOL distributions will use old EOL releases for their libraries.

People interested in maintaining the project will just not after they realize they have to keep to somehow attempting to juggle modern Python and versions that date back to 2008-2010.

Person above seemingly migrated to https://pypi.org/project/iso639-lang/

[C0rn3j]

@benoit74 Actually, what made you think that pkg_resources is missing? python-setuptools seems to have it and I can in fact get this compiling fine on Arch Linux, thought I couldn't and was running into this issue, but my issue was actually a package not being rebuilt correctly.

[benoit74]

From https://docs.python.org/3/whatsnew/3.12.html

gh-95299: Do not pre-install setuptools in virtual environments created with venv. This means that distutils, setuptools, pkg_resources, and easy_install will no longer available by default; to access these run pip install setuptools in the activated virtual environment.

A simple "fix" could be to add setuptools as explicit iso639 deps (this is why it works for you when you install python-setuptools), but this is not really the "future-proof" direction chosen by the community AFAIK. And I would have preferred to use only the stdlib.

I indeed chose to replace iso639 by iso639-lang in our codebase due to lack of maintenance of iso639. No regret so far, especially since DB is also well updated there, as ISO changes some codes from time to time.