So I am sltill investigating with some debug output, I can see this the first build part gives
dh_auto_build -- --after-build '{interpreter} setup.py build_man' pybuild --build -i python{version} -p 2.7 --after-build "{interpreter} setup.py build_man" D: pybuild pybuild:474: version: 2.20170125 D: pybuild pybuild:475: ['/usr/bin/pybuild', '--build', '-i', 'python{version}', '-p', '2.7', '--after-build', '{interpreter} setup.py build_man'] D: pybuild pybuild:36: cfg: Namespace(after_build='{interpreter} setup.py build_man', after_clean=None, after_configure=None, after_install=None, after_test=None, before_build=None, before_clean=None, before_configure=None, before_install=None, before_test=None, build_args=None, build_only=True, clean_args=None, clean_only=False, configure_args=None, configure_only=False, custom_tests=False, destdir='debian/tmp', detect_only=False, dir='/home/picca/Debian/silx/silx', disable=None, ext_destdir=None, ext_pattern='\\.so(\\.[^/]*)?$', install_args=None, install_dir=None, install_only=False, interpreter=['python{version}'], list_systems=False, name='silx', quiet=False, really_quiet=False, system=None, test_args=None, test_nose=False, test_only=False, test_pytest=False, test_tox=False, verbose=True, versions=['2.7']) D: pybuild pybuild:103: detected build system: distutils (certainty: 61%) I: pybuild base:184: /usr/bin/python setup.py build D: pybuild tools:217: invoking: /usr/bin/python setup.py build INFO:silx.setup:Use setuptools running build running build_py creating /home/picca/Debian/silx/silx/.pybuild/pythonX.Y_2.7/build/silx <----- right path the after part execute the build_man part BUT I: pybuild pybuild:242: python2.7 setup.py build_man D: pybuild tools:217: invoking: python2.7 setup.py build_man INFO:silx.setup:Use setuptools running build_man running build_py creating build/lib.linux-i386-2.7 creating build/lib.linux-i386-2.7/silx <- ko So the after part does not seems to take into account the .pydistutils.cfg file ??? Is it normal ?