[Distutils] Towards a simple and standard sdist format that isn't intertwined with distutils

[Antoine Pitrou]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2015 09:28:48 -0400
Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
> > 
> > In any case, sdists being apt for human consumption is an important
> > feature IMHO.
> > 
> 
> I don't think so. Remember in my footnote I mentioned that I wasn't using VCS
> to mean literally "something checked into a VCS", but rather the more
> traditional (outside of Python) "source release" concept. This could be a
> simple tarball that just has the proper, for human consumption, files in it
> or it could be a VCS checkout, or it could just be some files sitting on disk.

But why use two different formats for "source release" and "sdists"?
Currently sdists fit the assumptions for a source release, why
introduce some complexity and have the users deal with separate
concepts (with all the confusion that will inevitably ensue)?

Regards

Antoine.