From Tarek:

> Thanks for the digging David, I'll check for /tmp rights in that case.
> What's important in distutils, is to make sure it was able to create
> tarballs with various uid/gid using the new tarfile feature.

Right, and that part of the test (explicitly making uid/gid=0/0) is
passing.  It's just the default case that is failing, and only because
the test's assumption doesn't match what is actually happening in the
filesystem in terms of default group ownership.

From Martin:

> David, could it be that the directories where a change of group occurs
> also have the s-bit set? The sticky bit should have no such effect.

Not sure - I only noticed the "t" suffix on the directory "ls -ald"
listing, which the ls man page called sticky, but didn't think about it
much more than that.

-- David