[Distutils] The "dist" command

[Greg Ward]

On 27 September 1999, Fred L. Drake, Jr. said:
> 
> Greg Ward writes:
>  > explictly, you're welcome to do so!  If you want automated help in doing
>  > so, may I suggest the 'find(1)' command?  >smirk<
> 
>   I don't think there's any equivalent for Windows without buying 3rd
> party addons (not an acceptable alternative).  It would be easy to
> implement using os.path.walk(); I'm sure an interested Windows-bound
> reader of this group could contribute such a beast.

Hey, I was smirking when I said that.  The whole point of having some
wildcard support in the Distutils MANIFEST format is that people don't
need to use 'find', or a separate "make_manifest" script to generate it:
they just type a few lines and it works.  You and Marc-André have come
up with some clever ideas that will allow people to type even fewer
lines in some circumstances, at the expense of more complexity in the
code.

>   It's too early to say, probably:  those of us dragging our feet need 
> more experience with what you already have before we can say that it's 
> absolutely required or you can say that it absolutely isn't.

Exactly -- I claim that the current MANIFEST syntax is excellent for
generating a source distribution of the Distutils.  It would also work
quite well for the other software I've released in the past, whether
it's a C library, a MATLAB toolbox, or Perl module distributions.  It's
certainly better than the MANIFEST format used by Perl's MakeMaker (all
files explicitly listed, with the ExtUtils::MakeManifest module to help
you generate it the first time -- good luck maintaining it).  I hope it
fits the style of other developers, but we'll have to wait and see on
that.

Hyper-defensively yours,

        Greg
-- 
Greg Ward - software developer                    gward@cnri.reston.va.us
Corporation for National Research Initiatives    
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