From docs@:

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 2:56 AM, Peter Bröcker <peter.broecker@uni-koeln.de> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have tried to set up the distutils config files for a custom module
> installation. Using the suggested snippet  from
>
> http://docs.python.org/2/install/
>
> [install]
> install-base=$HOME/python
> install-purelib=lib
> install-platlib=lib.$PLAT
> install-scripts=scripts
> install-data=data did not work for me.
>
> Instead, I had to add install-headers and additionally modify all paths
> to include $base:
>
> [install]
> install-base=/some/dir
> install-purelib=$base/lib
> install-platlib=$base/lib.$PLAT
> install-scripts=$base/scripts
> install-headers=$base/include
> install-data=$base/data
>
>
> I'm unsure if this is actually a bug, but I could only resolve this with
> the help of this answer on stackoverflow:
> http://stackoverflow.com/a/12768721
>
> Best regards,
> Peter