> I guess I wasn't clear -- the idea was to force myself to use pip install,
> rather than ever doing a plain
>
> setup.py install or
> setup.py develop
>
> so:
>  pip install ./
> or
>  pip install -e ./
>
> this way, pip will inject the parts of setuptools I really need, but
> hopefully not any other cruft.

Its precisely the same as doing

"""
import setuptools
from distutils import setup

...
setup()

"""

Except that other people may still run setup.py directly, and then
you'll be picking up the pieces :).