tools to install not in python tree?

[commander_coder at hotmail.com]

Hello,

I have some materials for a project that I am working on that I keep
in a source code control system (svn now, but I'm experimenting with
mercurial).  I want to install these things from the repository, but
not into site-packages/ as Distutils wants to do.

For instance there are some administrative scripts I want to put in ~/
admin/  and some programs that I want in ~/public_html/ .   I also
want to run some post-install routines (for instance, reset the
database tables on my development machine).  So I'm looking for a tool
to take things from a repository and install them into place.
Something like:
  install_from_repository.py -version "1.2.7"
if there is a bug in 1.2.7 that I need to work on.

Some of the things that I am looking for are like what setup.py does
(for instance, changing the #! line on scripts or having a
convenient .cfg file).  But as I understand it setup only targets
installing below sys.prefix; is that right?

I can write routines for myself but other people must need to do these
things also and a tested solution is obviously better.  Is there such
a tool?

Thanks for any help,
Jim