[Distutils] [setuptools] old project release bootstrap broken by removal of 0.6a11

[John J Lee]

Somebody reported to me that one of my project releases [1] has suddenly 
stopped being installable for people who don't already have setuptools 
installed.

The breakage occurred because the recommended method for providing a 
bootstrap (bundling ez_setup.py -- or FWIW, ez_setup/__init__.py, in my 
case) at least as of setuptools-0.6a11, unconditionally fetches the 
version of setuptools whose version number is embedded in ez_setup.py. 
That now fails for 0.6a11, because that version has been removed from 
PyPI.

Obviously people trying to install this old release of mine can still 
install setuptools manually by downloading ez_setup.py themselves.  But it 
would be nice if in future, the bootstrap were clever enough to fetch a 
directory listing and then grab the latest setuptools release. 
Otherwise, project releases that were very easy to install in the past 
suddenly become more complicated to install just because the PyPI 
setuptools download area has been cleaned up.

[1] http://wwwsearch.sourceforge.net/ClientCookie/src/ClientCookie-1.3.0.tar.gz


John