I was having a look at https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/1473 but am unclear what is going wrong. Running: (python3 setup.py sdist --formats zip) gives what i would expect to be the desired result. [setup-tools-tes ~ 04:17] $ python3 setup.py sdist --formats zip running sdist running egg_info writing HelloWorld.egg-info/PKG-INFO writing dependency_links to HelloWorld.egg-info/dependency_links.txt writing top-level names to HelloWorld.egg-info/top_level.txt reading manifest file 'HelloWorld.egg-info/SOURCES.txt' writing manifest file 'HelloWorld.egg-info/SOURCES.txt' warning: sdist: standard file not found: should have one of README, README.rst, README.txt, README.md running check warning: check: missing required meta-data: url warning: check: missing meta-data: either (author and author_email) or (maintainer and maintainer_email) must be supplied creating HelloWorld-0.1 creating HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info copying files to HelloWorld-0.1... copying setup.py -> HelloWorld-0.1 copying HelloWorld.egg-info/PKG-INFO -> HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info copying HelloWorld.egg-info/SOURCES.txt -> HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info copying HelloWorld.egg-info/dependency_links.txt -> HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info copying HelloWorld.egg-info/top_level.txt -> HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info Writing HelloWorld-0.1/setup.cfg creating 'dist/HelloWorld-0.1.zip' and adding 'HelloWorld-0.1' to it adding 'HelloWorld-0.1' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/setup.py' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/PKG-INFO' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/setup.cfg' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info/SOURCES.txt' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info/top_level.txt' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info/dependency_links.txt' adding 'HelloWorld-0.1/HelloWorld.egg-info/PKG-INFO' removing 'HelloWorld-0.1' (and everything under it) [setup-tools-tes ~ 04:17] $ ls dist/ HelloWorld-0.1.zip