[Distutils] Are egg files needed when building/installing via --root?

[Brian Cameron]

Last October, I sent an email to this list asking how to install modules
which use setuputils so that modules are shipped in a way that is compatible
with Solaris packaging.  It was recommended to me to run "setup.py install"
with the "--root=/foo" argument and this causes the files to be installed
directly to the filesystem and not in an Egg format.

For example, when installing cssutils this way, it installs the python files
to /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/cssutils, and not in Egg format.  This
seems to work great, so thanks for the help with that.

However, installing this way seems to also install various egg related files
which I am not sure are actually needed when delivering in this manner.  For
example, installing CSSutils or simplejson puts directories with names like
these on the filesystem:

   /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/cssutils-0.9.5.1-py2.4.egg-info
   /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/simplejson-2.0.4-py2.4.egg-info

These directories contain files like PKG-INFO, SOURCES.txt,
dependency_links.txt, entry_points.txt, and top_level.txt.

Is there any value in shipping these files when not delivering as Eggs, or
could they safely be just removed?  Should they not be installed when
building with the "--root" option, or is there some other way to disable
having them be installed?

Thanks,

Brian