I had the same problem. I could not verify, that setuptools gets installed if not already in site-packages, but otherwise I have the same results as andi (see below). Whenever site-packages, was not listed in sys.path, a local setuptools egg was listed instead.

For me, it would feel most natural, if the system-wide site-packages would come after all the paths that point to components installed by the buildout, which probably means it should not be listed at all in the assignment to sys.path[0:0], as it is anyway listed further down the list. The behaviour for setuptools installed as egg, is exactly what I would expect.

The way bootstrap and buildout detect setuptools seems to differ, as can be seen, when setuptools is installed both as egg and as package. As I see it, it would be nicest to fix both, bootstrap, and buildout, to ...

... either move the position of site-packages in sys.path to the end of the sys.path[0:0] assignment (I did manually, and it solves the problem)
... or to never use setuptools installed system-wide, be it an egg or a package

I think the first would be cleanest and further, no local setuptools egg should be installed, if there is a system-wide one, that could be used instead (given its not out-dated or something). I hope there is no voodoo going on in setuptools, which prevents that solution.

best regards
florian


<testing>
setuptools installed as package:

$ grep -C2 site-packages bin/buildout
import sys
sys.path[0:0] = [
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/zc.buildout-1.0.0b31-py2.4.egg',
  ]
$
$ grep -C2 site-packages bin/instance
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/plone.recipe.zope2instance-0.9-py2.4.egg',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/zc.recipe.egg-1.0.0-py2.4.egg',
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/zc.buildout-1.0.0b31-py2.4.egg',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/python_openid-2.0.1-py2.4.egg',
--
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/five.customerize-0.2-py2.4.egg',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/five.localsitemanager-0.2-py2.4.egg',
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/python_openid-2.0.1-py2.4.egg',
  ]
$
$ grep -C2 site-packages bin/zopepy
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/five.customerize-0.2-py2.4.egg',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/five.localsitemanager-0.2-py2.4.egg',
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/python_openid-2.0.1-py2.4.egg',
  '/usr/lib64/zope-2.10.4/lib/python',
$

site-packages occurs in sys.path of buildout, instance and zopepy.


No setuptools installed:

$ python bootstrap.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "bootstrap.py", line 46, in ?
    PYTHONPATH=
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'location'
$

setuptools installed as package + setuptools as egg.

$ python bootstrap.py
Generated script '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/bin/buildout'.
$ grep -C2 site-packages bin/buildout
$

Looks good so far. However:

$ ./bin/buildout -No
Uninstalling zopepy.
Uninstalling instance.
Uninstalling productdistros.
Uninstalling plone.
Installing plone.
Installing productdistros.
Installing instance.
Installing zopepy.
Generated interpreter '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/bin/zopepy'.
$
$ grep -C2 site-packages bin/zopepy
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/five.customerize-0.2-py2.4.egg',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/five.localsitemanager-0.2-py2.4.egg',
  '/usr/lib64/python2.4/site-packages',
  '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/eggs/python_openid-2.0.1-py2.4.egg',
  '/usr/lib64/zope-2.10.4/lib/python',
$

site-packages are still listed in zopepy. It is written, that it got generated
again. However, I did a diff: it is exactly the same as before.


setuptools installed only as egg (no setuptools as package anymore):
$ python bootstrap.py
$

As expected, the buildout script didnt get changed.

$ ./bin/buildout -No
Updating plone.
Updating productdistros.
Updating instance.
Generated script '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/bin/instance'.
Updating zopepy.
Generated interpreter '/home/flo/eestec_ploneldap/bin/zopepy'.
$
$ grep -C2 site-packages bin/zopepy
$ grep -C2 site-packages bin/instance
$

site-packages is not listed anymore in sys.path, neither in zopepy nor in instance.
</testing>