Question: I just downloaded the installation files for a LaTeX package from CTAN. They mostly comprised a load of DTX files, and an INS file. The instructions said to run latex on the INS file, and I did. It produced a load of STY files, and a message appeared telling me to copy these STY files to my TeX directory tree. I did as instructed, and everything works fine.

But what was the point of all this DTX/INS shenanigans? Why aren't STY files just made available for immediate download in the first place?

Answer: 
The starting point for having a 'source' format is that it's a good idea to have code comments and it's also a good idea to have user documentation. The simplest way to do that of course is to put it all directly in the `.sty` file.

```
% Some info for the user
% ...
% Some code comment
\a \code \line

```

That is seen a a good number of packages.

The next consideration is that as TeX is a typesetting system we'd like to be able to typeset the documentation, not just read the 'raw' sources. That can be arranged by setting up the comments appropriately and reading in the source using some form of 'driver' (a small file that sets up to *typeset* rather than *use* the code/documentation).

This brings us to two partly-historical considerations. First, if comments are in the source, TeX has to read those lines each time the code is used. In general, the code will be used many more times than the documentation is read, so it makes sense to speed the process up if possible. Historically, stripping out comments made a significant different here, so this was worth it: today you probably don't notice the improvement very much!

One could split the user documentation into a separate file from the code, and again this is common, particularly for larger packages. However, that means more files. Again, historically sources were exchanged by 'direct' methods (email, *etc.*), and so minimising the number of files had a strong point. This is of course not so much of a consideration today.

All of the above assumes our source extracts to exactly one `.sty` file. However, by using the DocStrip system we can extract multiple files from one source, reorder lines, *etc.* For example, if we have several related files (*e.g.* drivers for graphics inclusion, input encoding support, ...), they will have shared lines and code comments plus some unique lines. Using a `.dtx` we can have them in one place and extract out the separate parts. We can also combined multiple sources into one `.sty`: file loading depends on the number of files used, so there is a benefit in putting a large code block together (sources don't want to be too long!). This is seen in for example `expl3` or the LaTeX kernel itself.

---

As the above details, there are technical and historical reasons for using the `.dtx` format. As it's used by the LaTeX team, there is a reasonably strong sense of 'community by-in' for the approach. Notably, for almost all end users today this is not a significant factor: the vast majority of users get code pre-extracted in TeX Live/MiKTeX, and CTAN also hold installable `.tds.zip` files for many packages. So other than developers, actually using `.dtx` files is not something that is widely done today.
After a bit of research, here is an excerpt on the reason for the 'dtx' and 'ins' format for file transfer.
===========================================================================================================

Why dtx at all?
===============

The first question to consider is why people bother with the dtx format. Not everyone does, and there are good arguments for and against each different approach. I could easily write an entire post just discussing the various alternatives, but that’s not what I want to do here!

The dtx format is favoured by the LaTeX team, and so is something of a standard for LaTeX package authors. The idea of the dtx format is that it allows the package author to put the user documentation, code documentation and code itself in one place. The user documentation can be typeset on its own, or the user and code documentation can be typeset together (literate programming). The code can also be extracted from the source for use: this means that more than one file can be included in the same source. This last point is perhaps the biggest selling point of the dtx format: you can include LaTeX package, class and some configuration files in one source. There is also a speed gain from removing redundant (comment) lines from a package: on a modern PC, this is pretty tiny, but was a bigger point in the past.

Extracted from <http://www.texdev.net/2009/10/05/the-dtx-format/>

And further discussion in <http://www.texdev.net/2009/10/06/a-model-dtx-file/>

While the format is not used in the CTAN archives, it is still around and the only way to install some packages. Fortunately there are excellent resources on how to use them.