I'd like to propose replacing the pip dependency but it requires a builtin feature not available before Python 3.8. Python version 3.7 reached end-of-life more than two years ago. Can we move to require python >= 3.8?

Currently the oldest version of Python receiving updates is 3.10, however I see no problem supporting allowing installs on 3.8 and 3.9 till we require features from a more recent version.

Alternatively, if support for 3.7 is desired, than we can use an explicitly declared dependency.