[Distutils] setuptools: ALL source tree?

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 04:14 PM 10/10/2006 -0400, Pierre Imbaud wrote:
>Trying to put setuptools to work, from the svn workspace, with no
>previous experience of distutils or setuptools (previously had a script
>making a tarball).
>As often happens with very good tools, very well documented, some very
>simple, yet vital pieces of information is missing for the newcomer.
>my source tree:
>root
>    setup.py
>    package
>    scripts
>    test
>    doc
>
>I dont want to distribute test: internal non-regression tools and
>data. dont want to distribute doc either.
>I found NO WAY, with setup.py at the top, to get these files out of
>the tarball.

See:

  http://python.org/doc/2.4.1/dist/manifest.html

and:

  http://python.org/doc/2.4.1/dist/sdist-cmd.html#sdist-cmd

for the full doc on this.

The short version: create a MANIFEST.in file in 'root' with these two lines:

prune test
prune doc

Setuptools will then remove anything under those subdirectories from its 
source lists.  The files will not then be included in source distributions.

If you do this, by the way, you should make sure that there is nothing your 
setup.py needs that is in those directories.  Otherwise, source 
distribution tarballs built with the 'sdist' command will not be buildable 
or installable.