If anyone is interested, I have implemented an "install" program compatable with the GNU version, excepting internalization and a bug I think is in their code. I placed a copy at ftp://starship.python.net/pub/crew/dalke/install.py for your enjoyment. It uses the Python license, which is doable since I never looked at the GNU source code. Its reason for being is that I think it could be useful for the distutils-sig, and because we (my company) needs something like it for distributing our own software on different platforms not all of which will have "install", and because, well, because it was there. I've tested it pretty well; not fully, but enough that I'm having problems coming up with new test cases. 'Course, now that I've finished that project I started looking at Greg Ward's initial distutils CVS distribution, and I see we have some overlap, though I like my "_mkdir" over his "mkpath", and I now understand why he copied and modified shutil.copy :) Andrew dalke@bioreason.com