Remove usages of "future" and "past"

[hacklschorsch]

Andrius wrote: He tested 1.20 with Hatchling just fine, but only now saw that Tahoe-LAFS relies on future and past and both won't be supplied / are obsolete in Debian Trixie:

I gave Tahoe-LAFS 1.20.0 a shot - buildsystem change went rather smoothly, but now I am facing a block concerning the usage of 'past' and 'future' Python packages. Both of them are not supplied by Debian.

Package 'future' has been removed from Debian as obsolete [1]. I do not know the details about it, but it seems that its sole task was to act as transition layer between Python 2 and 3. As Python 2 is no longer supported in Debian (by Tahoe-LAFS as well, it seems?), it has been suggested to get rid of 'future' as well. Alexandre Detiste seems to be willing to help Tahoe-LAFS with it [2][3], thus should you need a hand with 'future' removal, I would suggest contacting them.

This is my first time I encounter the usage of 'past', but I guess this is as well provided by 'future'.

I believe these issues have to be resolved before Tahoe-LAFS can enter Debian. I am quite surprised I have not noticed them earlier. It would be best if some sort of patch/PR could be devised removing 'past' and 'future' usage - I could apply it on Tahoe-LAFS code in Debian without the need of a new release of Tahoe-LAFS.

[1] ​https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1063264

[2] ​https://github.com/tahoe-lafs/tahoe-lafs/pull/1357

[3] ​https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1063827