[Distutils] A possible refactor/streamlining of PEP 517

[Paul Moore]

On 5 July 2017 at 17:14, Thomas Kluyver <thomas at kluyver.me.uk> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 5, 2017, at 05:08 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
>> is that flit doesn't handle scenarios like "I unpacked a sdist" or "I
>> downloaded the project archive from github and unpacked that" well.
>
> Flit handles these fine for everything *apart* from making an sdist. It
> can make a wheel, install the package, or symlink it as a development
> install. Hence why I'm so frustrated by the insistence that we must make
> an sdist when we have no need for an sdist.
>
> It's not a compromise I'm entirely happy with, but all the other options
> that we came up with had bigger problems, IMO.

Apologies, I should have been clearer - I did indeed mean "in order to
produce a sdist". I personally consider producing sdists and producing
wheels to be the two fundamental responsibilities of a build system,
so I dispute your statement that "we have no need for a sdist" (it's
not just pip that needs to do it, tox for example also relies on
building sdists). But this is off topic, and you've made your choice
for flit, so I'll say no more.

Paul