Question

Given the following (demonstration) project layout:

MyProject/
    README
    LICENSE
    setup.py
    myproject/
        ... # packages
    extrastuff/
        ... # some extra data

How (and where) do I declare different distribution types? Especially I need these two options:

1. A distribution containing only the source

2. A distribution containing the source and all data files under (extrastuff)

Ideally, how do I declare the upper two configuration whereas the second one depends on the first one?

Answer 1

I’ve implemented something like this before … the sdist command can be extended to handle additional command line arguments and to manipulate the data files based on these. If you run python setup.py sdist --help, it’ll include your custom command line arguments in the help, which is nice. Use the following recipe:

from distutils import log
from distutils.core import setup
from distutils.command.sdist import sdist

class CustomSdist(sdist):

    user_options = [
        ('packaging=', None, "Some option to indicate what should be packaged")
    ] + sdist.user_options

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        sdist.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

        self.packaging = "default value for this option"

    def get_file_list(self):

        log.info("Chosen packaging option: {self.packaging}".format(self=self))

        # Change the data_files list here based on the packaging option
        self.distribution.data_files = list(
          ('folder', ['file1', 'file2'])
        )
        sdist.get_file_list(self)

if __name__ == "__main__":

    setup(
        name = "name",
        version = "version",
        author = "author",
        author_email = "author_email",
        url = "url",
        py_modules = [
            # ...
        ],
        packages = [
            # ...
        ],
#        data_files = default data files for commands other than sdist if you wish
        cmdclass={
            'sdist': CustomSdist
        }
    )