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A.M.  Yes. I had considered this type of change as well.
Looks good, however, I have a few comments :)

1) I LIKE the log.info modification you made...

nit pick 1) Consider renaming new variable 'zipfile' to 
something like 'haveZipModule'. Just for clarity...

nit pick 2) You left the comment lines below: 'except 
DistutilsExecError' intact, only the indentation changed... I 
removed this comment, as in my mind it no longer made 
sense, since the function now attempts zipfile module first... 
If you are going to leave it, at least re-word it...

nit pick 3) I re-worded the raise DistutilsExecError message... 
to show the true order of what it could not do - as did the 
original message.