Please don't use "setuptools", the "rotten .egg" install system.

[Raffaele Ricciardi]

In order to build and run Mercurial on Linux, I needed Python with 
docutils.

I've just installed Python from source and later setuptools. As a 
non-Pythonista, my impression has been that the procedure of installing 
setuptools and then using them is quite straightforward, but it's not 
advertised enough to newcomers.