Setuptools has adopted distutils as outlined in [pypa/packaging-problems#127](https://github.com/pypa/packaging-problems/issues/127). Although there are some straggling issues, the current release of Setuptools fully obviates distutils if a certain environment variable is set. Soon, that behavior will be default.

Additionally, the distutils codebase remains maintained at [pypa/distutils](https://github.com/pypa/distutils) in a form suitable for releasing as a third-party package, should the need arise (i.e. pip install distutils).

The plan now is to freeze, deprecate, and in Python N + 0.1, remove distutils.

Already, Setuptools is identifying emergent bugs and other defects in distutils and providing fixes for them (issue41207, [pypa/setuptools#2212](https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/2212)). Keeping these changes in sync across three repos and different supported versions is tedious, so I'd like to move forward with the deprecation process as soon as possible.