Migrate away from obsolete 'distutils'

[bignose-debian]

In Python 3.10 and 3.11, distutils has been formally marked as deprecated. Code that imports distutils will no longer work from Python 3.12. https://peps.python.org/pep-0632

Please update the build system to use current recommended Python build practices. https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/tutorials/packaging-projects/