"Andy Robinson"
Of course, the right solution would be getting a decent text editor ;-)
No, it wouldn't. We have decent editors. But we ship code to people maintaining Unix systems, who should neither know nor care if it is Java or Python or Algol. If they have to edit some config file in VI when logged into a remote server, it's just wrong to ship it full of ^M thingies; someone actually phoned me and asked if it was safe to promote! At the same time I would quite like the freedom to make a package on my Windows machine, or even on a Mac.
In Python 2.3, this will be better. PEP 278, I think. Maybe this could be ported to the 2.2 line after 2.3 is out and all the bugs have been shaken out of it.
(BTW, does OS/X have Unix line endings?)
I think that depends :-/
I think the right solution is "a few subclasses" and one day some options in distutils to set this if you choose to. Distutils knows which files are source, tar and zip cannot be expected to.
I think so far distutils has made the right choice on this one: be dumb. This is much less aggravating than trying to do something smart and stuffing it up would be, IMHO.
Putting it in perspective: we had a quiet day and all decided to learn distutils, so we may ask some pretty dumb things before we grasp its inner beauty, elegance and fundamental rightness ;-)
If you can fix all the horrible bits while you're at it, that would be even better :) Cheers, M. -- "Well, the old ones go Mmmmmbbbbzzzzttteeeeeep as they start up and the new ones go whupwhupwhupwhooopwhooooopwhooooooommmmmmmmmm." -- Graham Reed explains subway engines on asr