distutils error in py2.1 on win2000

[Robert Kiendl]

with any distutils operation on my new python2.1 I get following
error ... ?
with pdb I know that _pathname_ in the error raising line is '' (empty
string)

-------

D:\tmp\Gnuplot-1.5>python setup.py install
running install
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "setup.py", line 46, in ?
    packages=['Gnuplot'],
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\core.py", line 138, in setup
    dist.run_commands()
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\dist.py", line 899, in run_commands
    self.run_command(cmd)
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\dist.py", line 918, in run_command
    cmd_obj.ensure_finalized()
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\cmd.py", line 112, in ensure_finalized
    self.finalize_options()
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\command\install.py", line 301, in
finalize_opt
ions
    'scripts', 'data', 'headers')
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\command\install.py", line 431, in
convert_path
s
    setattr(self, attr, convert_path(getattr(self, attr)))
  File "d:\python21\lib\distutils\util.py", line 86, in convert_path
    if pathname[0] == '/':
IndexError: string index out of range