DeprecationWarning: The distutils package is deprecated

[adamjstewart]

🐛 Bug

TorchMetrics still uses distutils, but distutils is deprecated.

To Reproduce

> python3 -Wall
>>> import torchmetrics
lib/python3.11/site-packages/torchmetrics/utilities/imports.py:18: DeprecationWarning: The distutils package is deprecated and slated for removal in Python 3.12. Use setuptools or check PEP 632 for potential alternatives
  from distutils.version import LooseVersion

Expected behavior

I would not expect TorchMetrics to still be using distutils.

Environment

• TorchMetrics version: 1.1, 1.2, master (spack)
• Python & PyTorch Version: 3.11.4 & 2.0.1
• Any other relevant information such as OS: macOS 13.5.2

Additional context

I also sometimes see a different error message from pytest:

DeprecationWarning: distutils Version classes are deprecated. Use packaging.version instead.

This gives one possible solution.

[Borda]

seems to be related to Lightning-AI/utilities#119
@adamjstewart would you be interested in sending a fix/upgrade?