Unvendor distutils.version.

changelogs/fragments/3988-distutils-vendor-removed.yml

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+minor_changes:
+  - "Remove vendored copy of ``distutils.version`` in favor of vendored copy included with ansible-core 2.12+. For ansible-core 2.11, uses ``distutils.version`` for Python < 3.12. There is no support for ansible-core 2.11 with Python 3.12+ (https://github.com/ansible-collections/community.general/pull/3988)."

plugins/module_utils/version.py

@@ -9,9 +9,13 @@
 __metaclass__ = type
 
 
-# Once we drop support for Ansible 2.9, ansible-base 2.10, and ansible-core 2.11, we can
-# remove the _version.py file, and replace the following import by
-#
-#     from ansible.module_utils.compat.version import LooseVersion
+from ansible.module_utils.six import raise_from
 
-from ._version import LooseVersion
+try:
+    from ansible.module_utils.compat.version import LooseVersion
+except ImportError:
+    try:
+        from distutils.version import LooseVersion
+    except ImportError as exc:
+        msg = 'To use this plugin or module with ansible-core 2.11, you need to use Python < 3.12 with distutils.version present'
+        raise_from(ImportError(msg), exc)