[Distutils] Random bits

[Michael Hudson]

Some other thoughts...

On Sat, 27 Nov 1999, A.M. Kuchling wrote:
[schnipp]
> 	* Building a distribution: it creates hard links to files.
> This means that if you delete a file and rebuild the dist without
> erasing the hard-link-filled subdir, the deleted file is still present
> in the distribution.  It's probably easiest to blow away the whole
> <product>-<version> directory, rather than attempting to scan its
> contents and update it.

Yes! I spent a frustrating few minutes trying to work out why files I was
trying to exclude from the distribution were turning up in the tarball...

Also, excluding files from the dist in general is a pain. 

I have bytecodehacks in CVS; I don't want to distribute the CVS folders. I
found no way to do this except building the MANIFEST file using a shell
script (which kind of defeats the point of the manifest, I'd have
thought).

Also excluding a single file doesn't work.

If I want to distribute all files in a directory `bar' except one called,
say, `foo', I'd expect to be able to write in the MANIFEST

bar !foo

but this doesn't work. It doesn't complain, foo is just included in the
archive.

I'd be happy to beat on these if someone could give me advice where to
start.

Would a .cvsignore style approach be suitable?

Other than these wrinkles distutils is a pleasure to use. Good work!

Cheers,
Michael