policyengine-us-data triggers distuitls error with Python 3.12 when dev dependencies are not installed, and CI/CD does not catch it

[baogorek]

When a user installs policyengine-us-data within a clean environment with Python 3.12+, upon import of policyengine_us_data, the following error is encountered:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'distutils'

While there is a test that simply imports this library written in the tests folder, it does not appear to be failing.

A fix for this issue would involve getting the test to fail, and then modifying the package to be compatible with Python 3.12+.

[baogorek]

The title "policyengine-us-data not fully compatible with Python 3.12+. Triggering distutils error" is a bit of a red herring. The project has an undeclared runtime dependency, which the [dev] install supplies. That's why the Github Action isn't throwing this error, because it installs dev dependencies.

Ok, I finally got a test to fail.