Question

How can I write setup.py so that:

1. The binary egg distribution (bdist_egg) includes a sample configuration file and
2. Upon installation puts it into the {prefix}/etc directory?

A sample project source directory looks like this:

bin/
   myapp
etc/
   myapp.cfg
myapp/
    __init__.py
    [...]
setup.py

The setup.py looks like this:

from distutils.command.install_data import install_data

packages = ['myapp', ]
scripts = ['bin/myapp',]
cmdclasses = {'install_data': install_data}
data_files = [('etc', ['etc/myapp.cfg'])]

setup_args = {
    'name': 'MyApp',
    'version': '0.1',
    'packages': packages,
    'cmdclass': cmdclasses,
    'data_files': data_files,
    'scripts': scripts,
#    'include_package_data': True,
    'test_suite': 'nose.collector'
}

try:
    from setuptools import setup
except ImportError:
    from distutils.core import setup

setup(**setup_args)

setuptools are installed in both the build environment and in the installation environment.

The 'include_package_data' commented out or not does not help.

Answer 1

I was doing some research on this issue and I think the answer is in the setuptools documentation: http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/setuptools#non-package-data-files

Next, I quote the extract that I think has the answer:

Non-Package Data Files

The distutils normally install general “data files” to a
platform-specific location (e.g. /usr/share). This feature intended to
be used for things like documentation, example configuration files,
and the like. setuptools does not install these data files in a
separate location, however. They are bundled inside the egg file or
directory, alongside the Python modules and packages. The data files
can also be accessed using the Resource Management API […]

Note, by the way, that this encapsulation of data files means that you
can’t actually install data files to some arbitrary location on a
user’s machine; this is a feature, not a bug. You can always include a
script in your distribution that extracts and copies your the
documentation or data files to a user-specified location, at their
discretion. If you put related data files in a single directory, you
can use resource_filename() with the directory name to get a
filesystem directory that then can be copied with the shutil module.
[…]