Remove unnecessary code paths for 3.9+ (follow up on skeleton changes)

newsfragments/4718.feature.1.rst

@@ -0,0 +1 @@
+Require Python 3.9 or later.

newsfragments/4718.feature.2.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+Remove dependency on ``importlib_resources``
+and the vendored copy of the library.
+Instead, ``setuptools`` consistently rely on stdlib's ``importlib.resources``
+(available on Python 3.9+).

newsfragments/4718.feature.3.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+Setuptools' ``bdist_wheel`` implementation no longer produces wheels with
+the ``m`` SOABI flag (pymalloc-related).
+This flag was removed on Python 3.8+ (see :obj:`sys.abiflags`).

pkg_resources/__init__.py

@@ -21,8 +21,8 @@
 
 import sys
 
-if sys.version_info < (3, 8):  # noqa: UP036 # Check for unsupported versions
-    raise RuntimeError("Python 3.8 or later is required")
+if sys.version_info < (3, 9):  # noqa: UP036 # Check for unsupported versions
+    raise RuntimeError("Python 3.9 or later is required")
 
 import _imp
 import collections

pyproject.toml

@@ -93,7 +93,6 @@ core = [
 	"packaging>=24",
 	"more_itertools>=8.8",
 	"jaraco.text>=3.7",
-	"importlib_resources>=5.10.2; python_version < '3.9'",
 	"importlib_metadata>=6; python_version < '3.10'",
 	"tomli>=2.0.1; python_version < '3.11'",
 	"wheel>=0.43.0",

setuptools/_importlib.py

@@ -6,7 +6,4 @@
     import importlib.metadata as metadata  # noqa: F401
 
 
-if sys.version_info < (3, 9):
-    import importlib_resources as resources  # pragma: no cover
-else:
-    import importlib.resources as resources  # noqa: F401
+import importlib.resources as resources  # noqa: F401