Add options to control install dir, tmp dir and keep tmp files

[merwok]

I would like to build wheels and sdists in a tox testenv in order to run twine check to validate the long description. I’ve seen how some projects do that but their methods don’t work for me:

• can’t use pip wheel . because I don’t have a setup.py and PEP 517 is not supported yet;

• can’t check the artifacts created by tox (in the “distshare” directory that is a local cache, by default .tox/dist) because there is only an sdist there (which I suppose makes sense for tox at the moment);

• I can run flit build but (apart from sdists are missing long_description #216) that always creates the dists in repo-root/dist, which seems a little rude; I like all activity (all writes) from tox commands to be confined in tox testenvs, and be independent of files I may have created in dist previously.

I understand that flit wants to minimize settings and knobs, which is a part of its appeal, but I feel that some typical options are really missing:

• control install dest dir (use case: build + check in a controlled dir)
• control build tmp dir (to use the tox testenv tmp dir)
• keep tmp files (for inspection / debugging)

Thanks for considering this!

[merwok]

We now have PEP 517 support and generic wheel build tools!

My original use case is addressed by these, but the specific request for typical directory options still stands.

[gl-yziquel]

I fully concur. I'd like to piggyback on flit to make a rather language agnostic build tool. And I'd like to use flit to follow rust cargo conventions and have the sdist and wheel built in target/ instead of dist/.

[gl-yziquel]

@merwok You wrote: "I can run flit build but (apart from #216) that always creates the dists in repo-root/dist, which seems a little rude".

That is the same problem I am facing. Not with the same folder layout as you, but I need the same functionality.

[merwok]

ah, I misunderstood the part about making flit and a language-agnostic build tool!