Oops, got a little too enthusiastic deleting code in that last revision:

we still have to *run* the sub-command that creates a built distribution.

Lib/distutils/command/bdist.py

@@ -63,6 +63,7 @@ class bdist (Command):
 
         sub_cmd = self.find_peer (cmd_name)
         sub_cmd.set_option ('format', self.format)
+        self.run_peer (cmd_name)
 
     # run()