it doesn't have to be in setuptools at all -- I suppose I should have defined more clearly what I meant:

setuptools_lite would be a package that does all things that setuptools does that we currently think it *should* do -- and nothing else.

whether it's in setuptools as a special mode, forked from setuptools, or written from scratch is all implementation detail.

perhaps it would be better with a different name -- maybe "buildtools"?

But I thought for acceptance by the community, maybe saying: 

replace all your "import setuptools" with "import setuptool_lite" would be clear what the intent was -- i.e. not YET ANOTHER brand new build system...

Oh and it would use the same API for the parts that it still supported. Given all that, if I were to do it, and I'm not sure I can... I would probably start with setuptools and rip stuff out rather than start from scratch.

well, see the other discussion about the role / necessity of distutils... but yes, it's certainly possible to make a new build system completely independent of distutils.

-CHB