When building RPM files with distutils, I noticed that adding "use_rpm_opt_flags=0" to the file setup.cfg had no effect, although the equivalent command-line option --no-rpm-opt-flags works as advertised.

Some debugging showed the reason: in the first case, the variable self.use_rpm_opt_flags in commands/bdist_rpm.py has the value '0' (string), whereas in the second case it is 0 (integer). The test "if self.use_rpm_opt_flags" does not work as expected if the variable is a string, of course.

I suppose that individual commands should not have to worry about the data type of binary options, so I suspect this is a general bug in distutils option processing.

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Actually the Distutils has machinery to handle this; 
however, no one told it that the use_rpm_opt_flags option 
is a Boolean.  Try the attached patch, and let me know if 
it fixes this.  (I'll check it into CVS anyway, since
it's obviously needed, whether or not it fixes your 
problem.)

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Marking as fixed and closing this bug.