Comment 26 for bug 8395

We should definitely include distutils in the core python package, rather than
keeping it in python-dev. python-dev can continue to hold the bits needed for
compiling python extensions written in C.

As I said on IRC, though, I don't think that distutils should interfere when the
user asks it to do something. It might make sense, though, for distutils to be
taught how to create Debian source packages as one of its targets, and if we
integrate them, I think that is the form that it should take.

distutils is basically python's version of make(1). It takes a (very
customizable, and often complex) specification as input, and executes a bunch of
commands which handle building and installing some program code. Generally,
that tends to result in some C source code being compiled, or some python
modules being copied around, but really it can mean anything. It makes no more
sense for distutils to go looking for .debs than it does for autoconf or make.
Instead, distutils is a framework that provides an interface between Debian
packages and Python developers, and we can enhance it in that direction.