[Distutils] Commit 17f89f4 "Update sdist to use sdist_add_defaults forward compatibility"

[Brandon Casey]

Hey Jason,

Thanks for the quick reply.  I wasn't able to get around to doing it
this past weekend.  I'll try to take a look this weekend.

-Brandon

On Sat, Oct 15, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Jason R. Coombs <jaraco at jaraco.com> wrote:
> The discussion started here: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/pull/750
>
> Basically, I don’t understand exactly why that functionality was disabled, but I give my best guess in that ticket - mainly that I think data_files is incompatible with encapsulated installs, so I suspect it was explicitly, intentionally excluded, though I’ve found no evidence to that effect.
>
> So for now, for compatibility, I’ve explicitly excluded that functionality with a comment.
>
> I’ve also explicitly overridden _add_defaults_python to capture the overriding behavior, which while similar isn’t identical. I’m leaving it as a subsequent exercise to see if that implementation can be merged.
>
> In my conclusion in that PR, I’ve suggested we go ahead and re-enable data_files, though I suggest we also add a test capturing that expectation.
>
>> On 15 Oct, 2016, at 13:43, Brandon Casey <drafnel at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> I just started looking at the setuptools repo last night to see if I
>> could figure out why setuptools doesn't place data_files inside an
>> sdist and I saw your commit 17f89f4 to teach the sdist command to use
>> the python 36 compatibility behavior.  But it overrides
>> _add_defaults_data_files() which actually adds the data_files to the
>> filelist, and replaces it with an empty function.
>>
>> If I remove this function, so that the one from
>> py36compat.sdist_add_defaults is used, then it seems to work correctly
>> for me.  But that is the extent of my testing so far.
>>
>> The doc comment for the new _add_defaults_data_files function just says:
>>
>>   Don't add any data files, but why?
>>
>> I see _add_defaults_python() was also overridden and is now only
>> slightly different from the one in py36compat.sdist_add_defaults.  It
>> looks like maybe you were just trying to make use of the py36compat
>> functions without introducing any change in behavior.  Is that the
>> only reason that _add_defaults_python() differs from the one in
>> py36compat and why _add_defaults_data_files is disabled?  Or do you
>> have some concerns about enabling this functionality?  Any thoughts of
>> enabling it?  If there's some active discussion or explanation on a
>> mailing list somewhere, please feel free to point me towards that.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> -Brandon
>