As the distutils have been deprecated, the documentation on building C/C++ extension modules should be updated to use more future proof tool.

I guess the section:

'Building C and C++ Extensions with distutils'

should be replaced with:

'Building C and C++ Extensions with setuptools'

Here is link to the section that needs to be updated/replaced:

https://docs.python.org/3/extending/building.html#building-c-and-c-extensions-with-distutils

Or maybe we should just include https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/main/Doc/distutils/_setuptools_disclaimer.rst as others do?

I will send my proposal :)

I think it would be very helpful to include an example how to build with setuptools as well. As it in the end boils down to two simple steps:

* install 'setuptools' package
* change import line:

"from distutils.core import setup, Extension" 

to

"from setuptools import setup, Extension"

It took me a lot of time to figure out that 'setuptools' have this 'drop-in replacement' API for distutils. IMHO, it's not very well documented anywhere.

I can make a PR with such addition, if you thinks it's good idea.

Distutils is deprecated, and core Python docs are not the place to show how to use a specific build system (thanks to a lot of work, we now have multiple viable build systems!).

First, I think that it's good and useful to have full, well-maintained examples of how to build extension modules in the docs.

Second, until distutils is removed, I think we should keep the documentation for how to use it. Due to this, I don't think adding the "setuptools disclaimer" would be appropriate, since we shouldn't remove the section once the setuptools docs are updated.

It seems to me that we should:

1. Add a prominent note about distutils being deprecated and what that means: can one still use it, should one still use it, when is it planned to be removed, etc.

2. Add mention that 3rd-party tools are now the recommended way to build extensions. Include links to the sections in these libraries' docs explaining how to build extensions.

I agree that documenting third-party tools in CPython docs is a bit weird. I guess this is more an issue with setuptools docs. IMHO here is no clear explanation on how to build extension modules there.

As a temporary work around, I wrote an example of building extension module with setuptools here:

https://elmjag.github.io/setuptools.html