If by on a whim, you mean after removal after 6 years of being warned against (the first "maybe use setuptools instead" note was in Python 2.7.12 in 2016), depr

If by on a whim, you mean after removal after 6 years of being warned against (the first "maybe use setuptools instead" note was in Python 2.7.12 in 2016), deprecation was proposed in october 2020, agreed in january 2021, and removal will happen in Python 3.12, which... hasn't been released yet.