=======
Breaking Changes
----------------
* 3948: Removed verification for existing ``depends.txt`` file (deprecated since v0.5a4).
* 3948: Remove autofixing of broken ``.egg-info`` directories containing the ``-``
character in their base name (without suffix).
They should no longer be produced by sufficiently new versions of ``setuptools``
(warning introduced in 2005).
* 3948: Remove deprecated APIs in ``easy_install``: ``get_script_args``,
``get_script_header`` and ``get_writer``.
The direct usage of ``easy_install`` has been deprecated since v58.3.0,
and the warnings regarding these APIs predate that version.
* 3948: Removed ``egg_info.get_pkg_info_revision`` (deprecated since 2015).
* 3948: Removed ``setuptools.dist._get_unpatched`` (deprecated since 2016)
* 3948: Removed support for SVN in ``setuptools.package_index`` (deprecated since 2018).
* 3948: Removed support for invalid ``pyproject.toml`` files.
During the implementation of PEP 621, it was identified that some users were
producing invalid files. As a transitional measure, the validation was relaxed
for a few use cases. The grace period, however, came to an end.
Changes
-------
* 3760: Added symlink support to launcher for installed executables -- by :user:`eugene-sevostianov-sc`
* 3926: Updated vendored ``packaging`` version from 23.0 to 23.1 -- by :user:`MetRonnie`
* 3950: Implemented workaround for old versions of ``vswhere``, which miss the
``-requiresAny`` parameter, such as the ones distributed together with Visual Studio 2017 < 15.6.
* 3952: Changed ``DistutilsMetaFinder`` to skip ``spec_for_pip`` on Python >= 3.12.
* 3952: Removed ``_distutils_hack.remove_shim`` on Python >= 3.12
(since ``distutils`` was removed from the standard library,
``DistutilsMetaFinder`` cannot be disabled on Python >= 3.12).
Misc
----
* 3920: Add a link to deprecation warning in ``pkg_resources`` and improve
``stacklevel`` for better visibility.