What should really be included in an sdist via MANIFEST.in? Besides the obvious files required for a functioning package (Anything not caught by the default rules required for the package to function that is) and obviously LICENSE.txt and similar. A package's source tree, more often than not, includes other files such as documentation, tests, examples, a random assortment of other text files, etc. Should docs & tests, in particular, be included in an sdist via MANIFEST.in? Should other files be added too? Or maybe the sdist should be kept to a minimum? This is not clearly discussed in the packaging guide: https://packaging.python.org/guides/distributing-packages-using-setuptools/#.... The sampleproject (https://github.com/pypa/sampleproject) does seem to include tests (Well a no-op test) and doesn't include them in the sdist.