[Distutils] Deprecate MANIFEST.in

[David Cournapeau]

Ben Finney wrote:
> Tarek Ziadé <ziade.tarek at gmail.com> writes:
>
>   
>> It doesn't make sense to have the list of the files in .svn or .hg
>> files. for your package.
>>     
>
> Again, why not? If I'm using a VCS for my source files, then the VCS
> is the Single Point of Truth for the inventory of source files.
>   

depending on your definition of sources, it is not. The VCS is there to
track a project, but sdist is a *distribution* mean. It is a packaged
version of your software - simple, but packaged nonetheless. There has
to be a (potential) difference between what goes in sdist and what is
recorded in the VCS. Python packaging is the only tool I am aware which
say both are equal.

Specially with DVCS, I would think using the VCS for sdist makes really
little sense - if you want the whole sources, just use
clone/branch/checkout, or the automatically generated tarball as
available from most web tools (gitweb, hgweb, etc...).

The duplication argument could be made the other way: why duplicating
with sdist what the VCS offers you ?

cheers,

David