Have you ever shipped broken sdists with missing files or possibly dirty sdists with files that shouldn't have been there? Have you noticed that standards compliant tools aren't making the same sdist that flit build is? Is hatchling adding .DSStore files when you ship from your macOS? No matter what build-backend you use, check-sdist can help! Check-sdist builds an sdist and compares the contents with your Git repository contents. It can even temporarily inject common junk files (like pycache files or OS specific files) and help verify that those aren't getting bundled into your sdist. If you are getting files you didn't expect or missing files you did expect, consult your build backend's docs to see how to include or exclude files.