allow editable wheel distributions to be built from the command line

[greyltc]

adds a new argument, -e/--editable, that can't be combined with --wheel or --sdist

[henryiii]

An “editable” wheel uses the wheel format not for distribution but as ephemeral communication between the build system and the front end. This avoids having the build backend install anything directly. This wheel must not be exposed to end users, nor cached, nor distributed.

https://peps.python.org/pep-0660/

[layday]

Thank you, but we don’t think this should be part of the CLI.

[greyltc]

Shame, I find support for PEP 660 very helpful for development. It would have been handy if this tool could have done that directly. Of course the wheels this feature generates aren't useful for distribution...