`sphinx-material` is no longer maintained and does not work with Python 3.12

[ugognw]

sphinx-material cannot be installed in a Python 3.12 environment since it uses the SafeConfigParser class which was moved to ConfigParser in Python 3.12. Further, the owner is unlikely to put any real effort into maintaining the project moving forward, which does not bode well for compatibility with newer Python versions. However, the author swears by the very similar sphinx-immaterial theme, so that may be a potential alternative.

AFAICT, the configuration is nearly identical. Something like the following changes are required in html_theme_options (in docs/conf.py):

• "base_url" -> "site_url"
• "nav_title" -> "toc_title"
• "color_primary"/"color_accent" -> "palette": { "primary": "blue", "accent": "light-blue" }

I have yet to check that the docs built without issue with this new theme, however.

[rkingsbury]

Thank you for tracking down the dependency issues @ugognw . If you'd like to try substituting sphinx-immaterial and open a PR I'll be happy to look at it. Alternatively, I don't mind keeping the docs CI in python 3.11 or 3.10 if you have better things to do :)

[ugognw]

I'll try to find time to look into how painful migrating might be in the next coming weeks. At the very least, I just wanted to flag this and a potential solution since it was a roadblock to updating the docs CI past python 3.11.