How to get distutils to do more?

[Michael Thomas]

I'm new to python, so bear with me if these seem like basic questions.

I've currently got a very simple setup.py file that simply enumerates 
the files to get installed.  That has worked fine so far, but now I have 
extra stuff that needs to happen as part of the installation.  Now I 
want to patch some files after they get installed.  For example, I 
install a file called "config.in" and I want to make modifications to it 
(embed the installation root dir, for example) to produce a file called 
"config".

The second thing that I want to do is to use a modified rpm spec file. 
The file generated by "python setup.py bdist_rpm" just isn't enough. 
Again, I need to make some callouts other than just "python setup.py 
..." to properly install my package.  I'm willing to maintain my spec 
file separate from setup.py, as long as I can get bdist_rpm to use my 
own spec file.  How can I do this?

Any pointers on how to do either of these things, or pointers to code 
that does something similar, are greatly appreciated.

--Wart