[Distutils] Distribute: will not build on Python 3 with --install-XXX arguments

[Paul Moore]

What I'm doing is checking out distribute, then trying to install it
into a temporary directory. However, when I do this, I seem to be
getting the files in python 2 form, *not* having been converted using
2to3. The resulting build is therefore broken.

Can anyone suggest what might be going on here? I've been looking at
this for hours now, and I'm no nearer to working out what is going on
:-(

I'm running on Windows 7, 64-bit, using Python 3.3 in Powershell. The
same happens in cmd.exe and Python 3.2. There are NO packages
installed in my Python installation, it's a straight install from the
python.org installer.

PS 13:26 C:\Work\Scratch
>hg clone http://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute dtest
real URL is https://bitbucket.org/tarek/distribute
requesting all changes
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 1160 changesets with 2491 changes to 443 files
updating to branch default
98 files updated, 0 files merged, 0 files removed, 0 files unresolved
PS 13:26 C:\Work\Scratch
>cd dtest
PS 13:26 C:\Work\Scratch\dtest
>mkdir a


    Directory: C:\Work\Scratch\dtest


Mode                LastWriteTime     Length Name
----                -------------     ------ ----
d----        05/03/2013     13:26            a


PS 13:26 C:\Work\Scratch\dtest
>py setup.py install --install-purelib=aa\purelib --install-platlib=aa\platlib --install-scripts=aa\scripts --install-headers=aa\headers --install-data=aa\data
[... lots of setup.py output clipped ...]
byte-compiling aa\purelib\setuptools\tests\test_sdist.py to
test_sdist.cpython-33.pyc
  File "aa\purelib\setuptools\tests\test_sdist.py", line 152
    except UnicodeDecodeError, e:
                             ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

byte-compiling aa\purelib\setuptools\tests\test_test.py to
test_test.cpython-33.pyc
byte-compiling aa\purelib\setuptools\tests\test_upload_docs.py to
test_upload_docs.cpython-33.pyc
byte-compiling aa\purelib\setuptools\tests\__init__.py to
__init__.cpython-33.pyc
byte-compiling aa\purelib\setuptools\__init__.py to __init__.cpython-33.pyc
byte-compiling aa\purelib\site.py to site.cpython-33.pyc
byte-compiling aa\purelib\_markerlib\markers.py to markers.cpython-33.pyc
byte-compiling aa\purelib\_markerlib\__init__.py to __init__.cpython-33.pyc
running install_egg_info
Writing aa\purelib\distribute-0.6.36-py3.3.egg-info
After install bootstrap.
Creating aa\purelib\setuptools-0.6c11-py3.3.egg-info
Creating aa\purelib\setuptools.pth
PS 13:27 C:\Work\Scratch\dtest
>

It's that SyntaxError that confirms that the generated files are invalid :-(

Paul