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

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 11:21 AM 11/27/2008 -0600, Brian Cameron wrote:
>Is there any value in shipping these files when not delivering as Eggs, or
>could they safely be just removed?

They cannot safely be removed, for several reasons, including:

1. They identify the installed package so that:
a) code which looks for dependencies at runtime will be satisfied, and
b) easy_install won't install a duplicate of the same package when 
trying to satisfy a dependency

2. Packages which provide or use entry points will not function 
correctly without them

3. Packages which include other metadata or project-specific data 
(such as localizations, translations, etc.) for runtime use will not 
work correctly either.

Thus, neither setuptools nor the distutils provide the option of not 
including .egg-info.