Patch# 1258 by Christian Heimes: kill basestring.
I like this because it makes the code shorter! :-)
diff --git a/Lib/distutils/fancy_getopt.py b/Lib/distutils/fancy_getopt.py
index b3231c3..72441fb 100644
--- a/Lib/distutils/fancy_getopt.py
+++ b/Lib/distutils/fancy_getopt.py
@@ -154,12 +154,12 @@
                 raise ValueError("invalid option tuple: %r" % (option,))
 
             # Type- and value-check the option names
-            if not isinstance(long, basestring) or len(long) < 2:
+            if not isinstance(long, str) or len(long) < 2:
                 raise DistutilsGetoptError(("invalid long option '%s': "
                        "must be a string of length >= 2") % long)
 
             if (not ((short is None) or
-                     (isinstance(short, basestring) and len(short) == 1))):
+                     (isinstance(short, str) and len(short) == 1))):
                 raise DistutilsGetoptError("invalid short option '%s': "
                        "must a single character or None" % short)