[Distutils] Deprecate MANIFEST.in

[Lennart Regebro]

2009/4/6 David Cournapeau <david at ar.media.kyoto-u.ac.jp>:
> Lennart Regebro wrote:
>>
>> Sure, if the plugin can't use a stable API then it should not be
>> included in the stdlib.
>>
>
> I was not talking about the plugin stability, but about the situation
> where the VCS detection is broken. As it has happened with setuptools
> very recently.

Yes, me too. That's why I said API stability, not plugin stability.
Because I didn't mean plugin stability, but the stability of the VCS
API, and hence VCS detection.

Am I really that unclear and hard to understand?

> If I have say the git plugin, and I run sdist in a git repo, but later
> someone run sdist from my tarball: how can I be sure it is the same ?

Well, because the tarball will include the files in the VCS. But sure,
if you in the tarball case add files in the directory that are not in
the VCS, that would be included too. Maybe that's a problem, I don't
know. I can't see the problem myself, but maybe somebody else would
have a case for that.

>> How is this different from any non-VCS situation?
>
> It is totally different: in the simple situation, I say which file to
> include/not to include. So it is reproducible, whatever the situation
> is. I won't have some ignored files because my own import does not have
> the same ignored files as the original package.

Are you suggesting that you always list all files explicitly without
wildcards? Because if not I don't see how your answer answers the
question.

>> Can you explain what is different and when?
>
> No other distribution mechanism that I know of uses magic to detect
> which files to distribute. Neither debian tools, nor rpm tools, nor
> autotools. Not being explicit about files for distribution is a terrible
> idea; a packaging tool should be explicit, to avoid as much as possible
> to do something unexpected.

We are now moving in circles, with every time I answer what the
problem is, you vagely talk about "magic". I take that as you don't
know, but you have made up your mind anyway. I don't think discussing
the issue more is going to get us anywhere.

-- 
Lennart Regebro: Pythonista, Barista, Notsotrista.
http://regebro.wordpress.com/
+33 661 58 14 64