[Distutils] Deprecating little used file types/extensions on PyPI?

[Paul Moore]

On 21 August 2016 at 09:21, Robert Collins <robertc at robertcollins.net> wrote:
>
> tl;dr: I think standardising on .tar.gz would be a rather shortsighted
> thing to do, given how many Windows users Python has and how much of a
> different supporting .zip makes for workflow on that platform - with
> no negative impacts on any other platform.

One thing that has (IIRC) come up in a pip bug in the past - how do
tar and zip format fare in terms of Unicode support? IIRC, older
versions of (I think) tar format don't include an encoding, nor do
they mandate UTF-8, so they have the potential to break when used
cross-platform. Sorry, I can't recall exact details.

I think it's important that whatever format we mandate works with full
Unicode filenames, and the available user tools support that.

Paul