Suppose the application creates one folder and add some data to it:

- /scratch/a/b/c

While the application is still running (it is not using the folder anymore), you see the data, copy it to somewhere and delete everything manually using the terminal.

After some time, (maybe a week or a month later, it doesn't really matter) the application wants to write again on that folder, but ops, the folder was removed. As application is very well coded :-), it checks for that folder and note that it doesn't exist anymore and needs to be recreated.

But, when the application try to do so, nothing happens, because the cache is not updated. ;/

Maybe distutils package was not designed for the purpose I am using it (I am not using it to install python modules or anything), but this behavior is not well documented anyway.

If you really think the cache is important, two things need to be done:
1) Implement a way to update/clear the cache
2) Include details about the cache and its implications on distutils documentation