[Distutils] A possible refactor/streamlining of PEP 517

[Thomas Kluyver]

On Mon, Jul 17, 2017, at 01:07 PM, Paul Moore wrote:
> If we have a consensus here that "build a sdist and build a wheel from
> it" is an acceptable/viable main route for pip to generate wheels
> (with "just ask the backend" as fallback) then I'm OK with not
> bothering with an "ask the backend to build a wheel out of tree"
> option. My recollection of the history was that there was some
> resistance in the past to pip going down the "build via sdist" route,
> but if that's now considered OK in this forum, then I'm fine with
> assuming that either I was mistaken or things have changed.

I think I was one of the people arguing against going via an sdist. The
important point for me is that an sdist is not a requirement for
installing from source -  it's ok by me if it tries building an sdist
first and then falls back to building a wheel directly.

Since flit generates no intermediate artifacts, though, it's not an
informative data point for where they should be placed.

Thomas