Hello, I have a package with a distutils script. This script calls numpy.get_include(), in order to get numpy's header files location. But the function seems to have a side effect by silently patching distutils. Some classes and functions of standard library distutils are replaced by numpy's ones. For example, before calling numpy.get_include(), the function new_compiler comes from standard library:

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from distutils.ccompiler import new_compiler new_compiler.__module__ 'distutils.ccompiler'

But after calling numpy.get_include(), the function comes from numpy:

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import numpy numpy.get_include() from distutils.ccompiler import new_compiler new_compiler.__module__ 'numpy.distutils.ccompiler'

This is because the code of numpy.get_include() imports numpy.distutils, and this triggers the patching mechanism. This is a problem because the behavior of distutils is different before and after the call to numpy.get_include(), and it breaks my distutils script. Is it possible to remove this side effect? Thanks, Nicolas Grilly