[copy/paste failure in my previous message, please disregard]

> One possible factor is that my .pypirc is symlinked from ~/.pypirc to config/python/.pypirc and
> it's conceivable that Python 3.2.0 has some issues with symlink resolution that caused it to not
> process the .pypirc properly.

Are these Windows symlinks?  Are they supposed to be dereferenced transparently by the OS (i.e. during open) like unix symlinks?

> Sure enough. I just confirmed that with Python 3.2.0, if .pypirc is symlinked, distutils behaves
> as if the .pypirc isn't present at all, but if that same .pypirc is copied, it behaves as
> expected. If one deletes the .pypirc altogether, it produces the same error.

OK.  For distutils2, I think we’ll want better logging/error reporting.  The user should see “no /what/ever/.pypirc found”, not “section not found”.

> I suggest we mark this bug as resolved (as the primary cause was due to the file not being read at
> all), but also apply your patch (which has some other good fixes) without the CUSTOM_SERVER, or
> with a version of the CUSTOM_SERVER that works.

Agreed.  I’ll resume work on that patch to understand why it fails.