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

[Jeremy Stanley]

On 2015-10-05 15:39:10 +0200 (+0200), Antoine Pitrou wrote:
[...]
> 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)?

An sdist is an installable package which just happens to _look_ a
lot like a source release tarball, but trying to pretend that
downstream packagers will want to use it as such leads to a variety
of pain points in the upstream/downstream relationship. For better
or worse a lot of distros don't want generated files in upstream
source code releases, since they need to confirm that they also ship
the necessary tooling to regenerate any required files and that the
generated files they ship match what their packaged tooling
produces.

While this similarity was probably seen as a "Good Thing [TM]"
initially (hence standardizing on a .tar.gz extension), over time
both the generated content of a typical sdist and the concern most
distros have over shipping upstream-generated files has increased to
the point where they really need to be viewed as separate and
distinct release artifacts now.
-- 
Jeremy Stanley