Ned> Due to a change in distutils released with Python 2.6.3, packages Ned> that use setuptools (version 0.6c9, as of this writing), or the Ned> easy_install command, to build C extension modules fail ... ... Ned> Among the packages known to be affected include lxml, Ned> zope-interface, jinja2, and, hence, packages dependent on these Ned> packages (e.g. sphinx, twisted, etc.). Maybe the Python test suite should include tests with a small number of widely used non-core packages like setuptools. I realize the pybots project exists to tackle this sort of stuff in greater detail. I'm thinking more of a smoke test than a comprehensive test suite covering all external packages. Setuptools is particularly important because so many extension authors use it. If it breaks it implicitly breaks a lot of PyPI packages. Skip