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Do "make altinstall" from trunk.
Try running "pysetup3.3 install distutils2"
This won't work properly, because distutils2 uses Python 2 syntax.
However, after running that command:
"pysetup3.3 remove distutils2" complains that distutils2 is not installed, but "import distutils2" works at the 3.3. command prompt

Oh, a potential way to avoid this would be to check that the metadata 
have the python 3 trove classifier in it.
We could also add a way to force the installation even if the right 
classifier is not present with a special flag passed to the command 
line.
Does this sounds like an acceptable change to you?

IIUC checking trove classifiers / requires-python or something else before installing may be a good idea, but this bug is about something else: a project can be half-installed. You could reproduce it with a Python 2 project with one file containing a syntax error (I think unittest2 is an example, see #10530).

My original report looks like a misdiagnosis. What appears to be happening is that "pysetup3.3 install" is case *insensitive* (thus allowing "pysetup3.3 install distutils2", but "pysetup3.3 remove" is case *sensitive*, thus requiring "pysetup3.3 remove Distutils2".
I figured this out because installing things with pysetup3.3 after running "make altinstall" actually broke test_packaging in my trunk build - apparently due to tests complaining that the package cache wasn't empty. Should I create a new issue pointing out that problem? Perhaps sysconfig should have a "checkout" profile that keeps everything away from system directories.
Anyway, after seeing Distutils2 in that test failure report, I thought to run "pysetup3.3 list" and confirmed the different capitalisation. Sure enough, upper-casing the initial D let the remove command work.