I was wondering if it might be a good idea to put a function in Distutils that could query if the currently installed version has certain abilities. Each ability could be assigned a name, and it could be implemented very simply: (in setup.py) try: if not check_ability('a'): raise Exception # to be caught and reraised as SystemExit except: # for versions of Distutils without check_ability(), or without 'a' raise SystemExit, 'This package requires a more recent version of Distutils' (somewhere in the Distutils) def check_ability(ability): ''' Return true if ability is supported by Distutils ''' return ability in ['a', 'b', 'c'] -- Harry Henry Gebel, Senior Developer, Landon House SBS ICQ# 76308382 West Dover Hundred, Delaware