Remove support for Python 3.8

[ichard26]

It's probably a good time to start considering dropping Python 3.8 support as it's been EOL for a few months now.

I've skimmed the output of pyupgrade using git add -p. There was one bad transformation involving a docstring, but other than that, it looks safe.

Towards #12989.

[ichard26]

haha, of course Ruff is still complaining. I'll fix that later today.

[hugovk]

A couple of other checks you could remove:

diff --git a/src/pip/_internal/locations/__init__.py b/src/pip/_internal/locations/__init__.py
index 0969502d6..d8c5f6a44 100644
--- a/src/pip/_internal/locations/__init__.py
+++ b/src/pip/_internal/locations/__init__.py
@@ -297,7 +297,7 @@ def get_scheme(
         if k == "platlib" and _looks_like_red_hat_lib():
             continue
 
-        # On Python 3.9+, sysconfig's posix_user scheme sets platlib against
+        # sysconfig's posix_user scheme sets platlib against
         # sys.platlibdir, but distutils's unix_user incorrectly coninutes
         # using the same $usersite for both platlib and purelib. This creates a
         # mismatch when sys.platlibdir is not "lib".
@@ -305,7 +305,6 @@ def get_scheme(
             user
             and k == "platlib"
             and not WINDOWS
-            and sys.version_info >= (3, 9)
             and _PLATLIBDIR != "lib"
             and _looks_like_bpo_44860()
         )
diff --git a/tests/functional/test_uninstall_user.py b/tests/functional/test_uninstall_user.py
index c49120ec2..664ba72da 100644
--- a/tests/functional/test_uninstall_user.py
+++ b/tests/functional/test_uninstall_user.py
@@ -79,7 +79,7 @@ class Tests_UninstallUserSite:
     @pytest.mark.xfail(
         sys.platform == "darwin"
         and platform.machine() == "arm64"
-        and sys.version_info[:2] in {(3, 8), (3, 9)},
+        and sys.version_info[:2] == (3, 9),
         reason="Unexpected egg-link install path",
     )
     def test_uninstall_editable_from_usersite(

[ichard26]

I'm not going to touch those as I'm not particularly confident about touching the locations code, and frankly, we can simply delete that test when Python 3.9 support is dropped. Thanks for bringing them up though!