[Distutils] Deprecate MANIFEST.in

[David Cournapeau]

Lennart Regebro wrote:
>
> Yes. And can you point out what in my suggestion is not simple, and
> what is magic, and what is not circumventable?
>   
 - Not simple: you need a plugin for each VCS. To be consistent, it
needs to be included in distutils, so when the VCS format changes, it
breaks - you can't update it easily because it is in the stdlib. And if
the sources are not under a VCS, it breaks, again.
 - Magic: it depends on the VCS. So if the same sources is under a
different VCS, it may be different. How do you handle ignored files ? Etc...
 
I have experienced all those problems for almost any package I am
distributing, be it big (numpy/scipy) or small (my owns).

Now, if on the contrary, you have a simple format, then you can always
have your own tool to generate this format from the DVCS. Why should
python be different from every other type of software ?

cheers,

David