Thanks Diez. For one thing I was getting setuptools mixed up with distutils. Then it occurred to me that this might be covered in the standard distutils docs (obvious I know but before I was thinking of it as a general Python problem and therefore wasn't sure where it might be documented)
The solution was therefore right in plain view: http://docs.python.org/inst/alt-install-windows.html (despite the misleading url this page applies to Unix) (Must. Check. Docs. Before. Posting.) Diez B. Roggisch wrote: > andybak wrote: > > > There are several gaps in my Python knowledge, one of which is the what > > exactly setuptools does and how it works. > > > > I'm on a shared host so can't write to site-packages therefore most > > setup.py's fail. > > > > My strategy for pure python packages is to run setup.py locally and > > copy anything that gets put in site-packages across to the shared host > > somewhere in my Python path. I'm sure there is a better solution! > > > > What's the best approach for situations when you can't tamper with the > > Python install? > > If you've got setuptools installed, you can use the development mode + a > staging dir that you put in your PYTHONPATH. Then the copying is done for > you. > > Diez -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list