[Distutils] Deprecate MANIFEST.in

[Jeremy Kloth]

On Sunday 05 April 2009 10:45:45 am Tarek Ziadé wrote:
> I would like to deprecate MANIFEST.in in Distutils, in favor of a
> package_data that can match directories with a glob-style pattern
> see : http://bugs.python.org/issue5302

Not all files that are released in an sdist would be considered for 
installation (ala package_data). Think of top-level README, COPYRIGHT, 
LICENSE or files (modules) used only by the setup.py script (ala custom 
commands). It would become an abuse of a keyword `package_data` to indicate 
files that are not actually *package* data.

Remember not all files are meant to be used by the Python code, some, like C 
header files, would only be used at build time. This just strikes me as being 
an over-simplification that really benefits no one.

Note, however, `sdist` does need to be updated to include more files 
automatically, like the aforementioned C header files. With those fixes in 
place, then, maybe, MANIFEST.in would not be required.

-- 
Jeremy Kloth
4Suite Developer	http://4suite.org/