I mentioned this a while back. If one specifies the same package in setup_requires and install_requires, it will not be installed. Here is a simple script that demonstrates this behavior. You could also dump setup_requires into the setup call and see the same behavior. -josh $ cat setup.py import os, ez_setup ez_setup.use_setuptools() from setuptools import setup, find_packages from setuptools.dist import Distribution if not os.path.isdir('Dummy'): os.mkdir('Dummy') open('Dummy/__init__.py', 'w').write('# Dummy') # Indirection so that setuptools grabs "setup_requires" dependencies Distribution( dict(setup_requires="PasteScript >= 0.5",) ) setup(name="Dummy", packages=find_packages(), install_requires=[ "PasteScript >= 0.5", "TurboKid >= 0.9.3", ], )