Explain what the patch changes

Downplay building a static Python; it would still be nice, but it won't
    get done for alpha1, and maybe not for 2.1 at all.

pep-0229.txt

@@ -52,17 +52,41 @@ Proposal
 
 Implementation
 
-    Patch #102588 on SourceForge will contain the proposed patch.
-    As of Dec. 1, the patch does the following:
+    Patch #102588 on SourceForge contains the proposed patch.
+    Currently the patch tries to be conservative and to change as few
+    files as possible, in order to simplify backing out the patch.
+    For example, no attempt is made to rip out the existing build
+    mechanisms.  Such simplifications can wait for later in the beta
+    cycle, when we're certain the patch will be left in, or they can
+    wait for Python 2.2.
+    
+    The patch makes the following changes:
 
-      * Removes the use of makesetup in building the interpreter.
-      * Hard-codes the presence of the strop, posix, and _sre modules. 
-      * Adds an empty top-level setup.py file.
+    * Makes some required changes to distutils/sysconfig (these will
+      be checked in separately)
 
-    Still to be done: 
+    * In the top-level Makefile.in, the "sharedmods" target simply 
+      runs "./python setup.py build", and "sharedinstall" runs
+      "./python setup.py install".  The "clobber" target also deletes
+      the build/ subdirectory where Distutils puts its output.
 
-      * Write the top-level setup.py
-      * Handle a few tricky bits such as the signal module. 
+    * Modules/Setup.config.in only contains entries for the gc and thread
+      modules; the readline, curses, and db modules are removed because 
+      it's now setup.py's job to handle them.
+
+    * Modules/Setup.dist now contains entries for only 3 modules --
+      _sre, posix, and strop.
+
+    * The configure script builds setup.cfg from setup.cfg.in.  This
+      is needed for two reasons: to make building in subdirectories
+      work, and to get the configured installation prefix.
+
+    * Adds setup.py to the top directory of the source tree.  setup.py
+      is the largest piece of the puzzle, though not the most
+      complicated.  setup.py contains a subclass of the BuildExt
+      class, and extends it with a detect_modules() method that does
+      the work of figuring out when modules can be compiled, and adding 
+      them to the 'exts' list.
 
 
 Unresolved Issues
@@ -76,8 +100,8 @@ Unresolved Issues
     binary?
 
     [Answer: building a Python binary with the Distutils should be
-    feasible, though no one has implemented it yet.  This will need to
-    be done, though the main setup.py will probably need to implement
+    feasible, though no one has implemented it yet.  This should be
+    done, though the main setup.py will probably need to implement
     its own BuildExt subclass anyway.]
    
     makesetup and the other contents of $(LIBPL)/config need to be