Hello,

i tried to install reportlab via easy_install, which always failed while compiling some c-modules.
Installing it via setup.py install worked flawlessly

After a while, I found the difference.
setup.py install calls the command _build_, which calls _build_clib_ and then _build_ext_

easy_install calls _bdist_egg_, which calls _install_lib_, which calls _build_ext_ WITHOUT calling _build_clib_.
The module docstring of the command build_clib mentions, that these libraries can be a dependency to build_ext, so I patched install_lib.py to call build_clib too, and now I can easy_install the newest reportlab!

If anybody wants to reproduce the behaviour, I added my patch, which I did against the current trunk of distutils/command/install_lib.py
I made a relative patch so to patch the file. you have to go into this directory and call

patch install_lib.py dependency.patch

Does this qualify as a bug in the bugtracker?

Best regards,

         Patrick