[Distutils] data_files and sdist

[Jeremy Hylton]

On Sun, 2004-02-22 at 11:53, Paul Prescod wrote:
> >> Is there a deep reason that the sdist command does not include 
> >> data_file files by default?
> > 
> > 
> > AFAIK, the files which are included by sdist are defined by the
> > MANIFEST -- seems reasonable to me.
> 
> I think that the MANIFEST is a bad idea. Why have a second way of 
> describing what files are relevant? Setup.py should be enough. Because I 
> think that MANIFEST is a bad idea, I delete it every time I build and 
> let Pyrex generate another. This brings me to my low-level question.

I rather like having a MANIFEST for ZODB releases, because I use it to
double-check what's in the release.  It prevents stray files -- extra
cvs revisions, backups, etc. -- from getting into a release.  It also
gives me a good way to check what's different from one release to the
next; I keep MANIFEST in CVS and regenerate it every time I do a
release.  In fact, we created a MANIFEST for some Windows installer we
did, even though they don't use distutils.

Jeremy