pypa / pypa/setuptools

Updating MANIFEST.in does not correctly update the package sdist creates

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bug major
Dominant language
Python
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Description

Originally reported by: spookylukey (Bitbucket: spookylukey, GitHub: spookylukey)


The behaviour of sdist depends on previous contents of MANIFEST.in, not just the current. This is not fixed even by running setup.py clean or setup.py clean --all (although this should not be necessary).

This is very surprising behaviour, and potentially dangerous too - if someone accidentally adds a MANIFEST.in rule that includes a file that must not be distributed and notice the problem, they would expect that removing the rule will remove the file, but it does not.

I've attached a bash script that demonstrates the problem.


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Research direction

Start with the attached bash script to reproduce how changing MANIFEST.in affects the generated sdist. Inspect the setup.py clean and setup.py clean --all behavior around source distribution creation. Done means the generated sdist reflects only the current MANIFEST.in contents, without depending on earlier rules.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
build-system
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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