On 07 December 1999, Fred L. Drake, Jr. said:
I'm not suggesting that these things shouldn't be options, only that they should be global options to the setup.py script, not local to each sub-command. For options that apply to a specific sub-command, go ahead and make them command-local. For options that describe the Python installation that the package is being added to, use global options. These are used to describe the target environment, and there's no good reason not to group them in the global options space.
I think that goes hand-in-hand with figuring out what's really needed, what's most commonly needed, and fixing up the installation options to reflect those (perceived) needs. That and rethinking the "dist" command (in particular, the MANIFEST/MANIFEST.in syntax and semantics) are on my list for Distutils 0.2.
Greg