It seems that the linkcheck is broken, but in a file that is not affected by this PR?

(guides/installing-using-linux-tools: line   88) broken    https://developers.redhat.com/products/softwarecollections/overview - 403 Client Error: Forbidden for url: https://developers.redhat.com/products/softwarecollections/overview

I am also able to access the URL from the browser:

so possibly that is just a hiccup?

Rather than framing this as a guide on the disadvantages of sdists, I'd prefer to see this framed topic as a guide on the advantages of publishing wheel archives in addition to publishing sdists.

sdists and wheels serve different purposes, so "publish both" is the only option that covers the full range of potential use cases (source control links don't provide assurance that the tag hasn't been moved since the release was made).

The packaging tutorial does suggest to publish both, but it would be good to have something to link to that explained why that is the recommendation.

Hi @ncoghlan thank you very much for the feedback.

I think we are talking about 2 different target audiences.

The text I initially wrote targets consumers installing packages.
The text changes you are proposing targets publishers producing packages.

In my view these are 2 very different things (not necessarily one excludes the other). Sometimes they can even be orthogonal (a consumer can use for example a wheelhouse to install wheels even if the original publisher does not provide wheels).

My major concern right now is with consumers, specially those which aim for reproducibility. So I will go ahead and close this PR if that does not align with the vision of packaging.python.org (which seems to target more package publishers).