Feature or enhancement

uuid.py has several protected deprecated functions which are no longer in use:

And one unused module-level var:

The problem is that they were not deprecated with a warning. Only with docs.
But, right now they are deprecated since 2020.

This has a big history:

• Fix uuid.uuid1() core logic of uuid.getnode() needs refresh #72196
• Deprecate and remove ctypes usage in uuid #84681 and bpo-40501: Replace ctypes code in uuid with native module #19948
• bpo-11063, bpo-20519: avoid ctypes and improve import time for uuid #3796

Some projects in the wild use _load_system_functions, despite the fact it is deprecated and was never documented and always was protected.

Examples:

• https://github.com/spulec/freezegun/blob/5e06dff53244992204706adf6907e7138ac96d39/freezegun/api.py#L71
• https://github.com/pganssle/time-machine/blob/ccc59927b4c51e35895c34578cba7aca69f28055/src/time_machine/__init__.py#L211
• https://github.com/adamchainz/time-machine/blob/39e327e18d52ebc76d3973b465ff42e139fd651d/src/time_machine/__init__.py#L223

So, what should we do?

1. Add a proper warning, schedule it for removal in two versions
2. Just remove them

I think that 1. is safer.
I would like to work on it after the decision is made.

Linked PRs

• gh-113308: Remove some internal parts of uuid module #115934
• gh-113308: Restore uuid._load_system_functions for 3.13 #117832