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.
diff --git a/Lib/distutils/command/bdist.py b/Lib/distutils/command/bdist.py
index 889cdba..685f525 100644
--- a/Lib/distutils/command/bdist.py
+++ b/Lib/distutils/command/bdist.py
@@ -63,6 +63,7 @@
 
         sub_cmd = self.find_peer (cmd_name)
         sub_cmd.set_option ('format', self.format)
+        self.run_peer (cmd_name)
 
     # run()