there was a thread a few weeks back on this.  everyone seemed to agree at the end that just better error messages were enough.  changing the default install location is a huge leap.

 

with the bootstrap installing setuptools, it's not necessary, but I plan on considering/helping/working on one or multiple of these for pip v1.5 anyway:

1)  "bundling" setuptools (Donald's idea).  it might not work, but interesting to try.  lotta pros to doing this

2)  replacing pkg_resources with distlib (vinay posted a PR for this)

3)  if not #1, pip installing setuptools on-demand when building is needed (this was the old plan I think for PEP439 until the recent changes, and get's us closer to the "MEB"s model)

Marcus