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