Retire distutils from Python code

[fhechtAdobe]

Description of Issue

The distutils module is considered deprecated and has been removed in Python 3.12. That means the OpenUSD code (v24.11) compiles against Python 3.12, but then hits a runtime error when launching usdview.

I understand that the VFX platform for CY2025 is still targeting Python 3.11.x, but this was fixed for the build script (even though this ticket about the issue was closed: #2817) and there are only two functions from distutils still in use:

from distutils.spawn import find_executable which is easily replaceable with shutil.which. And distutils.util.strtobool, which does not have a direct replacement, but should be easy. See also https://peps.python.org/pep-0632/

It would be nice to improve the Python 3.12 support by taking this small extra step. Thanks!

[nvmkuruc]

Agree that this would be helpful. 👍

[jesschimein]

Filed as internal issue #USD-10385

[mscherotter]

On Windows 11,

1. I just cloned the source
2. Ran the python build script C:\> python OpenUSD\build_scripts\build_usd.py "C:\path\to\my_usd_install_dir"
3. Built the code in Visual Studio 2022
4. tried to run the sample asset usdview OpenUSD/extras/usd/tutorials/convertingLayerFormats/Sphere.usda
   I got this error - it looks like there is still a dependency on distutils. Please advise:

D:\Source\openusd_install\bin>usdview D:\Source\Repos\OpenUSD\extras\usd\tutorials\convertingLayerFormats\Sphere.usda
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "D:\Source\openusd_install\bin\usdview", line 11, in <module>
    import pxr.Usdviewq as Usdviewq
  File "d:\source\openusd_install\lib\python\pxr\Usdviewq\__init__.py", line 17, in <module>
    from .appController import AppController
  File "d:\source\openusd_install\lib\python\pxr\Usdviewq\appController.py", line 35, in <module>
    from .layerStackContextMenu import LayerStackContextMenu
  File "d:\source\openusd_install\lib\python\pxr\Usdviewq\layerStackContextMenu.py", line 13, in <module>
    from pxr.UsdUtils.toolPaths import FindUsdBinary
  File "d:\source\openusd_install\lib\python\pxr\UsdUtils\toolPaths.py", line 10, in <module>
    from distutils.spawn import find_executable
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'