Tim> Win9X (command.com) users can't redirect stderr, and the DOS box Tim> there has a 50-line maximum output history. So stuff going to Tim> stderr is often lost forever. stdout can be redirected. I don't Tim> know whether disutils had that in mind, but it is "a reason" to Tim> leave it alone. Perhaps it would be friendlier if all distutils messages were hidden in "if verbose:" statements (many already are). PyInline could then dial down the verbosity before calling distutils. >> I'm using PyInline to execute a little bit of C code that returns >> some information about the system to the calling Python code. This >> code then sends some output to stdout. Tim> If there's a connection between this and disutils, it's not Tim> apparent from what you wrote. Sorry about the missing link. PyInline uses distutils to compile the C code. How PyInline does its think doesn't really matter to me, so I'm not going to be interested in distutils' messages. Skip