It would make package maintenance easier, as well as integration with other build systems e.g. autotools (necessary for projects where not everything is Python), if the distutils supported an uninstallation command, e.g. python setup.py uninstall This would presumably require monitoring of which files were installed where, and it's of course possible to do undesirable things, but exactly the same counter-arguments exist for autotools, and there the uninstall target is an important and useful feature for developers, once you know how to behave in a way to make it safe.