Installing, Building a package - generates unnecessary files? .egg-info/ build/ about setuptools HOT 2 OPEN

Hi @VladimirFokow please note that things are not very simple when it comes to .egg-info.
The .egg-info folders contain entry_points.txt, which in turn is used by importlib.metadata.

Packages may need to rely on that mechanism to bootstrap plugins during build time. Setuptools itself currently uses that mechanism.

Regarding your comments:

Suggested solutions:

1. At the very least, this behavior should be acknowledged in the Docs, and there should be advice to add the appropriate patterns for each command to .gitignore, e.g.: *.egg-info/, build/, dist/
2. Moreover, this issue:

• needs investigation of the origins of this mechanism; is this behavior actually needed for something, or it is truly a "historical artifact nobody thought of addressing" and should be cleaned up.
• if it's needed and should stay - then it definitely should be described in the documentation: good introduction, rationale, as well as advice and a good example how to deal with it, or how people usually deal with it.

For this we need all the help we can get. Please feel free to proceed with the investigation and/or submit pull requests (we can iteratively find what is the best wording for the docs, but in general it is good to assume that there is no clear cut recommendation that will fit everyone, and that different workflows/usages will entail different "good practices").

from setuptools.

• this comment describes examples where these files would be useful

from setuptools.