[Distutils] Setuptools: omit namespace package directories?

[Thomas Lotze]

Hi,

when using namespace packages, the corresponding package directories and
__init__.py files must physically exist in the source tree, even though
they can't, by definition of a namespace package, contain anything other
than subordinate directories and a fixed stanza of Python code, resp.

This gets annoying, especially when using nested namespaces. For example,
when writing a buildout recipe, the cleanest thing is to use several
namespaces, like zc.recipe.egg does. However, you end up jumping through
essentially empty directories all the time while working on the source.
There's evidence that this problem is a real one: buildout recipes
registered with PyPI tend to omit the "recipe" part at the expense of
namespace hygiene and PEP 8 compliance, for example gocept.download or
buildout_script.

Since there's basically not information in those boilerplate directories
and __init__.py files that couldn't be inferred from a keyword parameter
to setup(), would it be a sensible feature request that setuptools do
without the physical namespace directories in the future?

-- 
Thomas