tags 802792 - patch clone 802792 -1 reassign -1 dh-python clone 802792 -2 reassign -2 python-defaults thanks
I won't apply this patch to setuptools, however I think we should stop shipping SOURCES.txt everywhere. There is no reason to have this file about sources in a binary package.
dh-python is already doing that (removing SOURCES.txt), so there is bug in dh-python and/or python-defaults that it first tries to compare that file, and only then removes it. This should be fixed, not worked around like suggested in message #20.
I'm adding a patch to setuptools to don't install SOURCES.txt, when setup.py is called with --install-layout=deb. This won't have any effect for pybuild, because pybuild nastily ignores --install-layout=deb.
Even for upstream, the patch looks wrong. You should update install_egg_info.py (skimmer) with a list of VCS names to ignore.