distutils.dir_util.mkpath() is used to create a directory and is supposed to not fail when this directory already exists.
There's a chance that another process will create this directory between os.path.isdir() check and call to os.mkdir().
This was reproduced by a Gentoo user during parallel installation of Python:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=311437

I'm attaching the patch.

Note: Your patch fixes distutils, but in distutils2 dir_util is gone, use of its functions replaced by shutil calls or duplicated code with, I’m afraid, the same isdir/mkdir race condition. I wonder how we could add tests for that instead. Thanks for the heads-up, I’m adding a “grep makedirs|rmdir” on my todo list.

instead of waiting for user reports*

I'm attaching the patch for some mkpath functions in distutils2.

Still, shouldn't this also be fixed in 2.7?

Yes, it should, that’s why the versions field lists 2.7 too.

I’ll get to this in some days.

Fixed in r86244 (py3k), r86245 (3.1), r86246 (2.7), thanks!

For distutils2, I’d like to commit a comprehensive fix.  Do you want to expand your patch to cover all instances of mkdir/makedirs?

Maybe issue #9299 could be fixed first. Next you could backport new os.makedirs() in distutils2/_backport/os.py.

We could backport the new version of the function in our compat module (I’d rather not backport the whole os module), if you think it’s worth it.

I suggest to backport only makedirs() function.

Do you want to backport the new makedirs function to d2/_backport/__init__.py?