It seems that in issue #1322, `platform.dist` was deprecated, and is slated for removal in Python 3.8, but it is currently used in distutils.command.upload.upload_file: https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/6843ffe4533e9f2cde036296fd932fef6f059687/Lib/distutils/command/upload.py#L126 As far as I can tell, this line is hit only when you run `python setup.py bdist_rpm upload`, as far as I can tell. Using the `upload` command is *itself* very deprecated, and is dangerously broken in many ways. See, for example, this setuptools issue: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/1381 So I see three possible options (two realistic): 1. Remove the whole "comment" field from the upload, both for bdist_rpm and bdist_dumb. I'm not sure if PyPI uses this for anything, but I highly doubt it. 2. Have both bdist_rpm and bdist_dumb send a comment based on `platform.platform(terse=1)` 3. Remove the upload command functionality entirely for Python 3.8 with no deprecation warning. Obviously #3 is the unrealistic one, but it's very tempting. That said, I think we should go with #1 and maybe open a separate issue to actually deprecate the `upload` command in distutils (though to be honest we'll probably monkey-patch it out of existence in setuptools within a year and everyone uses `setuptools` anyway, so maybe #3 is less unrealistic than it seems).