pkg_resources deletions and sphinxcontrib

[meejah]

Hello,

I've run into the (somewhat recent) deletions of pkg_resources from setuptools in a few different projects. Sphinx is the first one I've run across the "namespace package" issue -- the issue being that the line __import__('pkg_resources').declare_namespace(__name__) found in my case in "sphinxcontrib-seqdiag" is no longer valid and has been deleted.

According to python/importlib_metadata#378 (comment) there is no migration path -- the solution suggested there is to "just use the new way in all projects at the same time".

Is this accurate? I'm happy to prepare a pull-request for sphinxcontrib-seqdiag (which I use in a couple projects) but don't have the capacity to do the same for all sphinxcontrib packages.

For now, my only option seems to be to pin setuptools < 82.0.0 in relevant documentation builds .. but of course, that solution becomes less and less tenable over time.

Any other options? Does Sphinx have a plan for this already? (I did search some project tickets but didn't see anything)