[Distutils] pip does not work as expected from a zip

[Vinay Sajip]

When run from a .zip file, pip does not seem to work as expected - it seems
to need to be conventionally installed.

I zipped up pip 1.4.1, setuptools (1.1.4) and wheel (0.21.0) into a .pyz. I
have pip 1.0 and setuptools 0.6 installed in system site-packages.

If I run "pip.pyz --version", it prints "1.0" rather than "1.4.1". If I run
"pip.pyz wheel", it tells me that it needs setuptools >= 0.8.

The problem seems to be that in at least these two places, pip runs code
looking like

dist = pkg_resources.get_distribution('XXX')

which of course will not find the setuptools or pip in the .pyz.

Is this behaviour by design? If so, it seems somewhat sub-optimal. If not,
should I create an issue on the pip tracker?

Regards,

Vinay Sajip