On Mon, Jul 10, 2017, at 07:01 AM, Nick Coghlan wrote:
So I think we have pretty solid evidence that the reason the procedural "build directory preparation" hook wasn't sitting well with people was because that isn't the way build systems typically model the concept, while a "build directory" setting is very common (even if that "setting" is "the current working directory when configuring or running the build").
Hooray! :-) Do we want to also provide a build_directory for the build_sdist hook? In principle, I don't think making an sdist should involve a build step, but I know that some projects do perform steps like cython code gen or JS minification before making the sdist. I think this was a workaround to ease installation before wheel support was widespread, and I'd be inclined to discourage it now, so my preference would be no build_directory parameter for build_sdist. Backends which insist on generating intermediates at that point can make a temp dir themselves. Then I guess that the choice between building a wheel directly and attempting to build an sdist first (with direct fallback) is one for frontends, and doesn't need to be specified. Thomas