5.2 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 set³
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)

There are a couple of options that modify this behaviour. First, use the --no-defaults and --no-prune to disable the standard ``include'' and ``exclude'' sets.⁴

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.

Footnotes

... set ³: In versions of the Distutils up to and including 0.9.2 (Python 2.0b1), this feature was broken; use the -f (--force-manifest) option to work around the bug.
... sets.⁴: Note that if you have no manifest template, no manifest, and use the --no-defaults, you will get an empty manifest. Another bug in Distutils 0.9.2 and earlier causes an uncaught exception in this case. The workaround is: Don't Do That.

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