distutils is supposed to be compatible with
Python 1.5.2.

In the attachment there's a small patch, against the
current CVS, that fixes some incompatibilities.

Changes:
* install_lib.py: reference to os.extsep
* build_py.py: unrolled three list comprehensions to loops
* build_py.py: modified a funct(*seq) to apply(funct, seq)
* bdist_rpm.py: string.replace() instead of
strObject.replace()

I've tried the patch with some _simple_ packages, and
it seems to work correctly, but I've not a great knowledge
of the distutils internals, so _double check everything_,
especially the loops I've written in the place of list
comprehensions.

Known issues:
* command/register.py could not be ported to 1.5.2
   because it uses modules like "urllib2"; for this reason
   running python1.5 ./setup.py --help-commands
   fails.
   I'm not sure what should be done (remove the
   "register" command if python version < 2.0?)

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I don't know how correct it is, but according to the
following post, 
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/distutils-sig/2004-September/004168.html
the compatibility target for the current distutils is Python
2.1, not Python 1.5.

(The install_lib.py reference to os.extsep needs to be
fixing in any case, since os.extsep only exists in Pythons
>= 2.3.)

Other References:

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1058960&group_id=5470&atid=105470
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1058937&group_id=5470&atid=105470

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Wooops, someone should remove all these "this file
should be compatible with 1.5.2" notes. :-)

Anyway (even if I'm glad that 1.5 is gone ;-) I'll
make my patches available though my home page.

Thank you for your note!

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This is now fixed in PEP 291 1.13, which lists 2.1 as the
backwards compatibility target; the HEAD CVS has been
updated accordingly.