Question

I can’t properly install the project package_fiddler to my virtual environment.

I have figured out that MANIFEST.in is responsible for putting the non-.py files in Package_fiddler-0.0.0.tar.gz that is generated when executing python setup.py sdist.

Then I did:

(virt_envir)$ pip install dist/Package_fiddler-0.0.0.tar.gz

But this did not install the data files nor the package to /home/username/.virtualenvs/virt_envir/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages.

I have tried many configurations of the setup arguments package_data, include_package_data and data_files but I seem to have used the wrong configuration each time.

Which configuration of package_data and/or include_package_data and/or data_files will properly install package_fiddler to my virtual environment?

Project tree

.
├── MANIFEST.in
├── package_fiddler
│   ├── data
│   │   ├── example.html
│   │   └── stylesheets
│   │       └── example.css
│   └── __init__.py
├── README.rst
└── setup.py

setup.py

from setuptools import setup


setup(
    name='Package_fiddler',
    entry_points={
    'console_scripts': ['package_fiddler = package_fiddler:main', ],},
    long_description=open('README.rst').read(),
    packages=['package_fiddler',])

MANIFEST.in

include README.rst
recursive-include package_fiddler/data *

Which configurations of setup.py(with code base above) have I tried?

Configuration1

Adding:

package_data={"": ['package_fiddler/data/*',]}

Configuration2

Adding:

package_data={"": ['*.html', '*.css', '*.rst']}

Configuration3

Adding:

include_package_data=True

Configuration4

Adding:

package_data={"": ['package_fiddler/data',]}

Removing:

packages=['package_fiddler',]

Configuration5 (Chris’s suggestion)

Adding:

package_data={"data": ['package_fiddler/data',]}

Removing:

packages=['package_fiddler',]

Configuration 6

Adding:

package_data={"": ['package_fiddler/data/*',]}

Removing:

packages=['package_fiddler',]

These configurations all result in no files at all being installed on /home/username/.virtualenvs/virt_envir/local/lib/python2.7/site-packages.

EDIT

Note to Toshio Kuratomi:
In my original post I used the simplest tree structure where this problem occurs for clarity but in reality my tree looks more like the tree below. For that tree, strangely if I only put an __init__.py in stylesheets somehow all the data files in the texts folder are also installed correctly!!! This baffles me.

Tree 2 (This installs all data files properly somehow!!)

.
├── MANIFEST.in
├── package_fiddler
│   │── stylesheets
|   |     ├── __init__.py
|   |     ├── example.css  
|   |     └── other
|   |          └── example2.css
|   |__ texts
|   |     ├── example.txt  
|   |     └── other
|   |          └── example2.txt
│   └── __init__.py
├── README.rst
└── setup.py

Answer 1

I personally dislike the way setuptools mixes code and data both conceptually and implementation-wise. I think that it’s that implementation that is tripping you up here. For setuptools to find and use package_data it needs for the data to reside inside of a python package. A python package can be a directory but there needs to be a __init__.py file in the directory. So it looks like you need the following (empty is fine) files:

./package_fiddler/data/__init__.py
./package_fiddler/data/stylesheets/__init__.py