Comment 9 for bug 746565

Revision 248 breaks the package build for Onboard in Oneiric and according to Francesco Fumanti also in Natty.

setup.py: error: no such option: --build-base

The reason is apparently, that importing certain files triggers Onboards own command line processing, which obviously doesn't know or care about setup.py options.
I could work around this, but I wonder if it is safe to assume for DistUtilsExtra that importing files out of context doesn't have any adverse side effects.