If you attempt to call "python setup.py install --prefix=/foo", and
/foo/lib/pythonX.Y/site-packages does not exist, the installation will
fail, requiring that the directory be made by hand.

Since there is no easy way to know in advance (other than by running
Python to build the version number string) exactly where the install
will go, this can be troublesome for automated build scripts. For this
reason, and also to be more consistent with existing build/install
systems like autotools, I suggest that distutils builds the necessary
portions of the lib directory tree (provided /foo exists). This should
certainly happen (IMHO) if the --force option is given.

This isn't accurate.  distutils *will* create the directory if it does
not exist.  Perhaps you have setuptools installed?  setuptools disables
this behavior of distutils and forces you to create the directory manually.

Thanks for the rapid feedback: yes, I am using setuptools and didn't
realise it would be responsible for this override. Is setuptools
feedback done completely independently from this tracker?

Yea.  setuptools is often discussed on distutils-sig:

  http://www.python.org/community/sigs/current/distutils-sig/

And has an issue tracker of its own:

  http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/

http://bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue54 sounds like this issue.

closing the issue since it's on setuptools side