setup.py leaves build, dist, .egg-info etc + even clean doesn't remove them

By default, setup.py leaves build, dist, ${project_name}.egg-info directories in a projects directory.

I’m not convinced these need to be here these days, certainly feels messy to have these.

Putting all this output into one directory would be some improvement. But maybe there’s a better solution ?

python setup.py clean doesn’t even delete these without adding hacks.

[gary-jackson]

Rather than trying to clean up files from the source directory, would it be better to be able to do out-of-source package builds? Something like this: cd /tmp/build && python /path/to/setup.py. That way those generated files never touch the source directory in the first place.

[gary-jackson]

@maphew I suggest that it be added as functionality (it doesn’t work that way currently), then documented as a best practice. It shouldn’t break the way it’s done now.