Skip to content

sdist format: qualify pax compatibility #2108

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Open
woodruffw wants to merge 4 commits into
base: main
Choose a base branch
from
Open

sdist format: qualify pax compatibility #2108

Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
4 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
dcbd1af
sdist format: qualify pax compatibility
woodruffw Aug 18, 2026
6d2050c
Strengthen
woodruffw Aug 19, 2026
29a2928
Loosen
woodruffw Nov 2, 2026
fc1330a
NOT RECOMMENDED -> MUST NOT
woodruffw Nov 2, 2026
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
13 changes: 11 additions & 2 deletions source/specifications/source-distribution-format.rst
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -74,10 +74,19 @@ at their respective paths relative to the root directory of the sdist
No other content of a sdist is required or defined. Build systems can store
whatever information they need in the sdist to build the project.

The tarball must use the modern POSIX.1-2001 pax tar format, which specifies
UTF-8 based file names. In particular, source distribution files must be readable
The tarball MUST use the modern POSIX.1-2001 pax tar format, which specifies
Comment thread
woodruffw marked this conversation as resolved.
Resolved
UTF-8 based file names. In particular, source distribution files MUST be readable
using the standard library tarfile module with the open flag 'r:gz'.

The tarball MUST NOT use pax-style vendor extensions (such as ``SCHILY.xattr``
or ``LIBARCHIVE.xattr``) for interoperability reasons.

Source distributions MUST NOT use non-pax features, even if those features are
structurally compatible with the pax standard. Installers and other consumers MAY
warn on source distributions that are not strictly pax-conforming.

Examples of non-pax features include GNU-style or legacy ("V7")-style tar members
and sparse member encodings (e.g. ``GNU.sparse`` extensions or ``S`` typeflag members).

.. _sdist-archive-features:

Expand Down
Loading