python version requirements

[HarviLehal]

It would appear that on python versions 3.12 and above, where distutils is fully discontinued, loading the required packages (namely smccomponenets) which uses mpi4py to load something, which requires 'distutils.msvc9compiler'.

So the issue lies with mpi4py I believe for not migrating to setuptools entirely? and the only workaround until they fix that it seems is just to use python versions that are below 3.12?

For example, below is a screenshot of the error when using python 3.13.3:

[MattB242]

Also had some fairly deep upstream compilation issues with Python3.13/mpi. Seems to work fine on Barkla2 if you set up your environments with v3.12 using the miniforge3/25.3.0-python3.12.10 load