Working to bring CI back to green

[tfoote]

It's failing with several recent changes. This PR is to just try to resolve that and unblock other changes.

I think python 2.7, empy 4.x and possibly setuptools/pip are updated/need updating.

[tfoote]

I've gotten everything back to green except ROS 2 Doc

Which is showing a real failure on the farm: https://build.ros2.org/view/Rdoc/job/Rdoc__rcl__ubuntu_jammy_amd64/81/console

03:57:55 /home/buildfarm/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/breathe/project.py:116: RemovedInSphinx80Warning: Sphinx 8 will drop support for representing paths as strings. Use "pathlib.Path" or "os.fspath" instead.
03:57:55   self._default_build_dir = os.path.dirname(app.doctreedir.rstrip(os.sep))
03:57:56 /home/buildfarm/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/exhale/configs.py:1408: RemovedInSphinx80Warning: Sphinx 8 will drop support for representing paths as strings. Use "pathlib.Path" or "os.fspath" instead.
03:57:56   _one     = containmentFolder == app.srcdir
03:57:56 
03:57:56 Extension error (exhale):
03:57:56 Handler <function environment_ready at 0x7f1ce81cc430> for event 'builder-inited' threw an exception (exception: startswith first arg must be str or a tuple of str, not _StrPath)
03:57:56 Sphinx-build exited with return code '2'

This looks like something to do with the python transition to path objects instead of string representations of paths between something generated and exhale.

[claraberendsen]

It seems like the version being installed on CI is 7.2.6 that has a change of logic from str to pathlib.Path paths (sphinx-doc/sphinx#11605). Breathe has not yet addressed this drift (breathe-doc/breathe#943), however version 7.3 of sphinx has a workaround this.

[tfoote]

Merging to get CI back to mostly green with a tracker for the one remaining issue: #1029

[nuclearsandwich]

Thank you!