./configure --prefix=DIR && make && make install tries to install files
in directories outside of DIR.  This happens both with trunk (r66412)
and 2.6b3.  This is a problem for users of GNU stow, for example.  I
know that certainly this worked fairly recently on the py3k branch, for
example, and I believe it also used to work on trunk.

I'm not certain whether in this particular run the --prefix directory
existed or not prior to make install, but I certainly get essentially
the same failure regardless of whether that directory exists.

~/src/Python-2.6b3$ ./configure  --prefix=/home/john/stow/python26b3
...
~/src/Python-2.6b3$ make
...
~/src/Python-2.6b3$ make install
/usr/bin/install -c python-config
/home/john/stow/python26b3/bin/python2.6-config
rm python-config
./python -E ./setup.py install \
	   	--prefix=/home/john/stow/python26b3 \
		--install-scripts=/home/john/stow/python26b3/bin \
		--install-platlib=/home/john/stow/python26b3/lib/python2.6/lib-dynload \
		--root=/
running install
running build
running build_ext
INFO: Can't locate Tcl/Tk libs and/or headers

Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules:
_bsddb             _tkinter           bsddb185        
dbm                gdbm               sunaudiodev     
To find the necessary bits, look in setup.py in detect_modules() for the
module's name.

running build_scripts
running install_lib
copying build/lib.linux-i686-2.6/_random.so ->
/home/john/lib/python2.6/site-packages
error: could not delete
'/home/john/lib/python2.6/site-packages/_random.so': Permission denied
make: *** [sharedinstall] Error 1

OK, this was because I had a .pydistutils.cfg file containing the
following (ironically, put there following somebody's recipe for
installing setuptools packages using stow):

[install]
install_lib=~/lib/python$py_version_short/site-packages
install_scripts=~/bin
 
[easy_install]
site_dirs=~/lib/python$py_version_short/site-packages

Removing that file, make install no longer tries to install files
outside of the directory passed to --prefix

So this bug is not valid, and I don't think there's any regression.

There's probably another bug about making it awkward to invent a
consistent way of installing Python software using tools like stow, but
I'm not sure whether that bug lies with Python or with setuptools, or both.

OK, thanks for the report anyway :)