Skip> Amen to that. See Guido's note and my response regarding soundex Skip> in the Doc-SIG. Perhaps you could get away with a very small core Skip> distribution that only contained the stuff necessary to pull Skip> everything else from the net via http or ftp... Jack> I don't know whether this subject belongs on the python-dev list Jack> (is there a separate distutils list?), but let's please be very Jack> careful with this. The Perl people apparently think that their Jack> auto-install stuff is so easy to use ... I suppose I should have added a <0.5 wink> to my note. Still, knowing what Guido does and doesn't feel comfortable with in the core distribution would be a good start at seeing where we might like the core to wind up. Skip Montanaro | http://www.mojam.com/ skip@mojam.com | http://www.musi-cal.com/~skip/ 518-372-5583