[Distutils] Deprecate MANIFEST.in

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:04 PM, P.J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
>> > We already have this...  it's called MANIFEST.in.
>> >
>>
>> hum, ok let's deprecate what package_data provides then, (the ability
>> to define a list
>> of files without a MANIFEST.in template)....
>
> MANIFEST.in (under setuptools at least) is merely a way to specify
> *exceptions* to the defaults, for what goes in the sdist.

I doubt this was the first goal of this templating system (dealing
with what setuptools was unable to deal with)

>
> I don't understand why you're so anxious to deprecate something without
> first understanding what it's for.

Because we have too many ways to handle this problem right now. It's a mess.

(and I think this mess is partly because of your project - besides all
the good features it has of course)

>
> If you want to put some sort of sdist_exceptions in setup.py to replace the
> *file*, that's one thing, but the *same functionality* of MANIFEST.in is
> still needed, or else setuptools would've deprecated it.

We need to describe a list of file. that's for sure. But not with :

a VCS Plugin,  + a MANIFEST.in but just for the exceptions + a bit of
package_data etc..

how do you expect people to do it right ?

Cheers
Tarek