(apologies for half sent mail, emacs save file and thunderbird send message have the same key mapping :-S) Okay, so I had a simple buildout config as follows: [buildout] parts = eggs versions = versions [versions] setuptools-version = == 0.6c8 zc.buildout-version = == 1.0.6 [eggs] recipe = zc.recipe.egg eggs = BeautifulSoup == 3.0.7a interpreter = py extra-paths = . Now, from what Jim's said, it would seem like the versions section would be a good thing to use, so I tried changing the above recipe to: [buildout] parts = eggs versions = versions [versions] setuptools = 2 zc.buildout = 2 BeautifulSoup = 4 [eggs] recipe = zc.recipe.egg eggs = BeautifulSoup interpreter = py extra-paths = . Now, I could have sworn this ran without barfing on the (deliberately) non-existent versions. However, paranoidly re-checking before (*cough*) I sent the mail, it seems to work now. Are there any situations where this would fail? cheers, Chris -- Simplistix - Content Management, Zope & Python Consulting - http://www.simplistix.co.uk