how GNU stow is complementary rather than alternative to distutils

[P.J. Eby]

At 12:04 PM 5/10/2009 -0600, Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:
>The thing that prevents this from working with setuptools is that
>setuptools creates a file named easy_install.pth during the "python 
>./ setup.py install --prefix=foo" if you build two different Python
>packages this way, they will each create an easy_install.pth file,
>and then when you ask GNU stow to link the two resulting packages
>into your system, it will say "You are asking me to install two
>different packages which both claim that they need to write a file
>named '/usr/local/lib/python2.5/site-packages/easy_install.pth'.

Adding --record and --single-version-externally-managed to that 
command line will prevent the .pth file from being used or needed, 
although I believe you already know this.

(What that mode won't do is install dependencies automatically.)