Judging by the recent traffic on python-dev, lots of people here are interested in the problems of distributing and installing Python modules. So I thought y'all might want to know that I've finally got some interesting news to report on the distutils-sig, and will shortly be reporting it, soliciting feedback, testers, etc. If you're not already on that list, this might be a good time to join.
(Oh, the news? Distutils can now compile and install NumPy, PIL, and mxDateTime (just because I happened to have those three distributions sitting around on my home PC). Of course there are all sorts of caveats and limitations, so c'mon over to the distutils-sig if you want to hear what they are and discuss how to fix them. Later this week, of course, after I've checked in all the relevant code.)
Greg