version of them. So, I don't think it's accurate to consider
multi-version installation a totally new feature. (And AFAIK, the point of contention isn't that setuptools *supports* multi-version installation, it's that it's the *default* implementation.)
That distutils features could be manipulated in some esoteric way doesn't mean that distutils supports multi-version installations - not by design, anyway. It's perfectly fine for setuptools, buildout and other third-party tools to support multi-version installations in whatever way they see fit - I only raised the question of a PEP because multi-version would be a significant new feature if in Python (leaving aside technicalities about whether something "bundled with Python" is "in Python"). Regards, Vinay Sajip