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Does description-file in setup.cfg, section "metadata" have any effect?

I recently downloaded 208,492 of Python packages from PyPI. 18,844 of them had a setup.cfg with a metadata section which contained the key description-file. Does that key have any effect on setuptools or PyPI? It is mentioned in the setuptools docs, but I don't understand it.

Example setup.cfg

[metadata]
description-file = README.md
name = foopackage
long_description = file: README.md
long_description_content_type = text/markdown
Solution

  • It's not mentioned in the code, neither in distutils nor in setuptools:

    distutils $ grep -Frw description-file .
distutils $ cd ../setuptools
setuptools $ grep -Frw description-file .

    If you want to publish long description from a file via setup.cfg use

    long_description = file: README.rst

    trick. See the very setuptools' setup.cfg. It's handled in setuptools/config.py.