[Distutils] sdist default archive format

[Eric Smith]

Zooko Wilcox-O'Hearn wrote:
>>> Having an archive format that preserves such bits would probably be a 
>>> good way to solve all such problems -- by making it the packagers 
>>> problems to set the bits before packaging rather than setuptools's 
>>> problem to figure out which bits ought to be set after installation.
>>
>> How would you create such an archive on Windows? (A serious question, 
>> not trying to be argumentative.)
> 
> You mean a bdist?  You can't "cross-compile" and build a bdist for Linux 
> on Windows (can you?), or vice versa.  I think we're only talking about 
> "non-cross-compiled" bdists here.

I mean an sdist, which I hope is what we're still talking about, in the 
context of using a .zip or .tar file. How do I specify +x on Windows? I 
use cygwin, but what about those who don't? (Again, this is a serious 
question. I don't use straight Windows enough to know the answer.)

> A metadata-preserving archive format wouldn't make this harder, and it 
> might make it easier.

As long as the metadata is cross-platform, which I'm not sure it is. 
We're trying to create a cross-platform source distribution, after all.

Eric.