[Python-modules-team] Bug#547841: python-docutils: manipulates site-packages/ directly, failing with Python 2.6

[joss at debian.org]

Package: python-docutils
Version: 0.5-4
Severity: important
User: debian-python at lists.debian.org
Usertags: python2.6 dist-packages

Hi,

python-docutils is built using the Python distutils mechanism.

Starting from Python 2.6, the installation paths for distutils have
changed. Instead of /usr/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages, the default has
now changed to /usr/local.

The packaging helpers (debhelper, dh, cdbs, python-support,
python-central) will pick automatically these changes, or are being
fixed to do so. However, python-docutils seems to do some
manipulations in the site-packages/ directory in its build process.

To fix this issue, the recommended approach is to pass
"--install-layout=deb" to the "python setup.py" invocation. This is
already the default if you use dh - or migrate to dh, which is also
recommended.

When you do that, modules are installed in
/usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages instead of site-packages. You have
then to either use a *-packages wildcard, or to use
/usr/share/python/python.mk which provides useful functions to
manipulate these directories.

Cheers, 
-- 

 .''`.      Josselin Mouette
 : :' :
 `. `'   “I recommend you to learn English in hope that you in
   `-     future understand things”  -- Jörg Schilling