Guido,
Gordon, I'm sorry, but from this description I still have no idea what your stuff is (and I forgot the URL so I can't look it up).
http://starship.python.org/crew/gmcm/installer.html The Linux stuff has a couple alpha testers and will probably get announced in a week or two.
For example, if it's not (just) for installing, what *is* it for?
At the bottom level, it's a bunch of tools using freeze's modulefinder, imputil.py and 2 kinds of archives. There's at least 2 layers above that, with "Installer" being the top. There's a clean separation between the layers, so you can break in wherever you like.
What is the ``"manifest" problem'' and how did you solve it?
The problem is specifying a set of resources, hopefully without having to list them explicitly. I solve this with a config file that lets you specify packages, directories, directory trees.. with filters that can work from paths, names, extensions, regular expressions...
Also, note that editing site.py is a no-no! You can create/edit sitecustomize.py, but you should leave site.py alone!
That would work fine. One of the standalone configurations will write a site.py, but that's for a completely self-contained installation (ie, one which will have no conflicts with another Python installation). I'd also note that, for Windows at least, the path-expanding mechanism created by site.py has not caught on. I've got lots installed, and no site-python, site-packages or sitecustomize. - Gordon