[Distutils] tourist here, with a dumb RTFM question

[Michael Bayer]

On Mar 6, 2014, at 2:59 PM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

> Michael Bayer <mike_mp <at> zzzcomputing.com> writes:
> 
>> I don’t know the metadata format in pep426 well enough to comment (as I 
> wanted to use it one day and found
>> that it seemed to still be pretty much vapor), but I’ll reiterate: these 
> are source distributions, not
>> binaries or wheels or anything like that.  A source distro has to build, 
> and builds need options.    A metadata
>> format that purports to represent metadata about a source distribution and 
> does not support flags is a
>> broken metadata format.
> 
> PEP 426 only covers installation metadata - its scope does not cover source 
> distributions (there will be another PEP covering that).
> 
> Apart from the most recent changes being not yet implemented and some open 
> issues relating to hooks, PEP 426 seems to cover installation metadata 
> reasonably well. However, sdist metadata is a different kettle of fish.

OK so why does PEP-426 compatibility imply removal of command line switches from setup.py files ?