updating basic tools before twine upload

[vineetbansal]

Updating basic packaging tools (especially packaging) before attempting twine upload, as per pypa/twine#1216.

This is working on a fork (after I changed the PyPI package name to try it out).

Also removed several old python versions that are no longer supported by latest cibuildwheel.

[codecov]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 86.43%. Comparing base (69e7a90) to head (b21811a).
⚠️ Report is 3 commits behind head on main.

Additional details and impacted files

@@           Coverage Diff           @@
##             main     #328   +/-   ##
=======================================
  Coverage   86.43%   86.43%           
=======================================
  Files          14       14           
  Lines        1851     1851           
  Branches      320      320           
=======================================
  Hits         1600     1600           
  Misses        207      207           
  Partials       44       44           

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