Thanks Filipe for the summary. I was unsure the status.

Even if we grant that Debian is too intrusive in its patching of distutils, it's Python and distutils that are making the change here, so it's not unreasonable for Python to maintain feature parity with the current regime.

It's plausible that you or I could convince Matthias to adapt Debian to a less intrusive approach by adapting the whole Debian ecosystem to a new approach. I suspect achieving that change would be a bit of a challenge.

The only other alternative I see is for distutils to provide some mechanism to enable Debian to achieve its current expectations without patching.

It may not be necessary for CPython to support this mechanism. It may be the case that CPython can support the site install schemes, but that any additional customizations remain a contract between Setuptools/distutils. I'm unsure what implications that would have for other build systems not based on distutils, but presumably it would be up to those systems to support Debian.

I suggest one of three courses here:

1. Convince Debian to drop their customizations.
2. Add support to the CPython customizations to support Debian.
3. Draft support for Setuptools/distutils to support Debian customizations and get confirmation from Debian that satisfies their needs.

Are there any other options? What direction would you like to pursue?