[Distutils] formencode as .egg in Debian ??

["Martin v. Löwis"]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> I try to use very long names for options that can have damaging effects 
> if used indiscriminately.  A project that's installed the "old-fashioned 
> way" (which is what this does, apart from adding .egg-info) is hard to 
> uninstall and may overwrite other projects' files.  So, it is only safe 
> to use if the files are being managed by some external package manager, 
> and it further only works for a single installed version at a time.  So 
> the name is intended to advertise these facts, and to discourage people 
> who are just reading the option list from trying it out to see what it 
> does.  :)

And that is indeed a fine principle. The option would only occur
inside debian/rules (which is the Makefile to build the deb file),
so users would never need to type it manually (except for the DD
creating debian/rules).

My request would be that the option is stable in its meaning,
e.g. if there is a need to extend/change its semantics, a different
option is introduced (unless it is certain that existing Debian
packages would continue to build correctly under the new meaning).

Regards,
Martin