Question

I have the following folder structure:

bootstrap.py
setup.py
conf/
    buildout.cfg

Now how do I make it so that running python bootstrap.py puts the generated folders bin, eggs, parts, etc. on the root instead of under conf folder?

Answer 1

The base directory for buildout is always the directory that the starting configuration file is found in, so in your case that’s in conf/.

There are two work-arounds for this, one easy, one harder. The first is to just place a bare buildout.cfg file in the root, and have it include the file in conf/:

[buildout]
extends = conf/buildout.cfg

Alternatively, you can set the *-directory options in your conf/buildout.cfg file for each of the eggs, develop-eggs, parts and bin directories:

[buildout]
bin-directory = ../bin
parts-directory = ../parts
eggs-directory = ../eggs
develop-eggs-directory = ../develop-eggs

That’ll set the these directories to the parent of your conf/ directory; e.g. the same directory your bootstrap file is in.

However, any recipe that still refers to ${buildout:directory} will still use the conf/ directory insead of your project root dir. You cannot set that option to a relative path, you must either let buildout set it for you or specify a full path:

[buildout]
directory = /full/path/to/directory

In my opinion, you are best off using the first option, it makes running the bootstrap script easier anyway as it by default looks for a buildout.cfg file in the current directory.