4.2 Manifest-related options

The normal course of operations for the sdist command is as follows:

• if the manifest file, MANIFEST doesn't exist, read MANIFEST.in and create the manifest
• if neither MANIFEST nor MANIFEST.in exist, create a manifest with just the default file set
• if either MANIFEST.in or the setup script (setup.py) are more recent than MANIFEST, recreate MANIFEST by reading MANIFEST.in
• use the list of files now in MANIFEST (either just generated or read in) to create the source distribution archive(s)

Second, you might want to force the manifest to be regenerated--for example, if you have added or removed files or directories that match an existing pattern in the manifest template, you should regenerate the manifest:

python setup.py sdist --force-manifest

Or, you might just want to (re)generate the manifest, but not create a source distribution:

python setup.py sdist --manifest-only

--manifest-only implies --force-manifest. -o is a shortcut for --manifest-only, and -f for --force-manifest.

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Distributing Python Modules

Previous: 4.1 Specifying the files Up: 4. Creating a Source Next: 5. Creating Built Distributions

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Release 2.4.1, documentation updated on 30 March 2005.