title: Inconsistent behaviour of bdist vs sdist when distributing a Python package
body: <p>I have a big project with the following structure. <strong>utilities</strong> is a collections of small modules that are reused in various places by the different components of the <strong>big_project</strong>, <strong>project1</strong>, 2, etc.</p>
  
  <pre><code>big_project/
  |-- __init__.py
  |-- utilities/        
      |-- mod1.py
      |-- mod2.py
  |-- project1/
      |-- setup.py
      |-- __init__.py
      |-- src/
          |-- __init__.py
          |-- mod1.py
          |-- mod2.py
      |-- examples/
          |-- __init__.py
          |-- mod.py
  |-- project2/
     |-- ...
  |-- project3/
     |-- ...
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I want to distribute <strong>project1</strong>, including <strong>utilities</strong> (because I don't want to distribute <strong>utilities</strong> separately). The distributed package would have the following structures:</p>
  
  <pre><code>project1/
      |-- utilities/
      |-- src/
      |-- examples/
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>and <code>project1/setup.py</code> looks like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>setup(
      name = 'project1',
      packages = ['project1.utilities', 'project1.src', 'project1.examples'],
      package_dir = {'project1.utilities': '../utilities/',
                     'project1.src': 'src',
                     'project1.examples': 'examples'}
       )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>The problem: <code>python setup.py bdist</code> produces a distribution with the right structure, but <code>python setup.py sdist</code> doesn't:</p>
  
  <p><strong>bdist</strong>: content of <code>project1-0.1.linux-x86_64.tar.gz</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    /./usr/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/
          |-- project1/
              |-- utilities
              |-- src
              |-- examples
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>sdist</strong>: <code>content of project1-0.1.tar.gz</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>    project1/
          |-- src/
          |-- examples/
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>So sdist left out the utilities module, whereas bdist included it at the correct location. Why?</p>
  
  <p>If anyone wants to look at the real project: <a href="https://testpypi.python.org/pypi/microscopy" rel="nofollow">https://testpypi.python.org/pypi/microscopy</a> where both the bsdist and sdist archives are available.</p>
  
  <p>Both setuptools and distutils produce the same result. Because the project is pure Python, I'd rather use sdist...</p>