[Distutils] Get install prefix for module at runtime

[Tarek Ziadé]

On Wed, Sep 16, 2009 at 5:40 PM, Wolodja Wentland
<wentland at cl.uni-heidelberg.de> wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 17:38 +0200, Wolodja Wentland wrote:
>> My question is: "How to reliably access data files from a module in
>> foo?"
>
>> Approach 2 - writing a build.py file at installation time
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> The last question made me think, that Approach 1 works for the three
>> standard installation schemes, but fails miserably if the user decides
>> to do anything fancy.
>
> I implemented this approach like this:

Sorry for the late reply,

>
> Is this a good approach? Is there anything i can do better?

The idea of providing your own install command seems good, except that I find
writing all informations in a .py overkill.

In the same way the option --record works, you can memorize
all installation locations into a simple ConfigParser-like file you
add to the files that
are installed in Python in your package.

Your code can then read the .cfg file it at execution time using
__file__ to get your
paths.

Although with this approach you have to be careful if your package is
distributed in some environments (py2exe, setuptools eggs) where you might be
located in a zipped file.

What are your target platforms ?

Tarek