DEBUG: isolated problem; see comments

Dockerfile

@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
-FROM debian:11
+FROM ubuntu:22.04
 RUN apt-get -qq update && apt-get install -y -qq \
-    curl python3 python3-distutils python2 \
+    curl python3 python2 \
     build-essential libreadline-dev libssl-dev zlib1g-dev \
     vim-tiny
 #   build-essential etc.: to build python with pythonz

cont-test

@@ -52,11 +52,32 @@ echo '━━━━━ unknown argument error'
 
 echo '━━━━━ run pactivate clean'
 #   This does the full bootstrap and virtualenv creation
-(. $pactivate)
+(. $pactivate) || fail "pactivate failed: return code $?"
+#
+#   With system Python 10.x but without python3-distutils package,
+#   bootstrap appears to install fine, but after that either:
+#   1. pactivate quietly fails with exit code 127, or
+#   2. pactivate quietly exits with success but having produced the
+#      wrong directory format (with a local/ in it).
+#   Next step:
+#   1. What can we do to fix the wrong directory format in this situation?
+#   2. Is it safe to do that in all the other situations, too:
+#      deb11/no-distuils, deb11/with-disutils, 22.04/with-distutils
+#
 [[ -x $bsve/pip ]] || fail "not executable: $bsve/pip"
 [[ -d $bsve/virtualenv/ ]] || fail "not a dir: $bsve/virtualenv/"
 $virtualenv/bin/pip --version || fail "pip --version didn't work"
-exit 99
+
+# temp stop and look
+echo
+ls -CF .build/virtualenv/
+fail "XXX Tests temporarily stop here"
+
+echo '━━━━━ XXX debugging test'
+rm -rf .build
+ln -s $(/usr/local/pythonz/bin/pythonz locate 3.10.7) .python
+(. $pactivate)
+$virtualenv/bin/pip --version || fail "pip --version didn't work"
 
 echo '━━━━━ run pactivate installed'
 #   This should do nothing but run the existing virtualenv's activate