gh-95299: Stop installing setuptools as a part of ensurepip and venv (#101039)

Remove the bundled setuptools wheel from ensurepip, and stop installing setuptools in environments created by venv.

Co-Authored-by: Hugo van Kemenade <hugovk@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: C.A.M. Gerlach <CAM.Gerlach@Gerlach.CAM>
Co-authored-by: Oleg Iarygin <oleg@arhadthedev.net>

1 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/Doc/whatsnew/3.12.rst b/Doc/whatsnew/3.12.rst
index 2a371eb..bd95bfe 100644
--- a/Doc/whatsnew/3.12.rst
+++ b/Doc/whatsnew/3.12.rst
@@ -731,6 +731,24 @@ Removed
   project can be installed: it still provides ``distutils``.
   (Contributed by Victor Stinner in :gh:`92584`.)
 
+* Remove the bundled setuptools wheel from :mod:`ensurepip`,
+  and stop installing setuptools in environments created by :mod:`venv`.
+
+  ``pip (>= 22.1)`` does not require setuptools to be installed in the
+  environment. ``setuptools``-based (and ``distutils``-based) packages
+  can still be used with ``pip install``, since pip will provide
+  ``setuptools`` in the build environment it uses for building a
+  package.
+
+  ``easy_install``, ``pkg_resources``, ``setuptools`` and ``distutils``
+  are no longer provided by default in environments created with
+  ``venv`` or bootstrapped with ``ensurepip``, since they are part of
+  the ``setuptools`` package. For projects relying on these at runtime,
+  the ``setuptools`` project should be declared as a dependency and
+  installed separately (typically, using pip).
+
+  (Contributed by Pradyun Gedam in :gh:`95299`.)
+
 * Removed many old deprecated :mod:`unittest` features:
 
   - A number of :class:`~unittest.TestCase` method aliases: