I added support to run ctypes from a CVS sandbox without the need to install the package. This even works for different Python versions on the same machine. This behaviour is triggered by the presence of a .CTYPE_DEVEL file in the ctypes package directory. Just do a 'setup.py build' and insert the top-level directory into sys.path (with setting the PYTHONPATH env variable, with a .pth file, or however), and it should work.