Move distutils import to a separate file to avoid linter errors.

2 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/setuptools/__init__.py b/setuptools/__init__.py
index 811f3fd2..9df71a6d 100644
--- a/setuptools/__init__.py
+++ b/setuptools/__init__.py
@@ -2,6 +2,9 @@
 
 import os
 import functools
+
+import setuptools.distutils_patch  # noqa: F401
+
 import distutils.core
 import distutils.filelist
 import re
diff --git a/setuptools/distutils_patch.py b/setuptools/distutils_patch.py
new file mode 100644
index 00000000..a2fc1a8c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/setuptools/distutils_patch.py
@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+"""
+Ensure that the local copy of distutils is preferred over stdlib.
+
+See https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/417#issuecomment-392298401
+for more motivation.
+"""
+
+import sys
+import importlib
+from os.path import dirname
+
+
+sys.path.insert(0, dirname(dirname(__file__)))
+importlib.import_module('distutils')
+sys.path.pop(0)