[Distutils] Distributing doc files w/ distutils src pkg?

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 02:57 PM 10/28/2007 +0000, Skip Montanaro wrote:
>I have a simple setup.py file:
>
>     #!/usr/bin/env python
>
>     from distutils.core import setup
>     setup(name='lockfile',
>           author='Skip Montanaro',
>           author_email='skip <at> pobox.com',
>           maintainer='Skip Montanaro',
>           maintainer_email='skip <at> pobox.com',
>           url='http://www.webfast.com/~skip/python/',
>           download_url='http://www.webfast.com/~skip/python/lockfile.tar.gz',
>           version='0.1',
>           py_modules=['lockfile'],
>           data_files=[('doc', ['lockfile.rst'])],
>           )
>
>I've used the data_files arg to setup to note where the docs live.  Alas,
>the sdist command doesn't include this in the tar file:
>
>     % tar tfz dist/lockfile-0.1.tar.gz
>     lockfile-0.1/
>     lockfile-0.1/lockfile.py
>     lockfile-0.1/PKG-INFO
>     lockfile-0.1/README
>     lockfile-0.1/setup.py
>
>I'm a complete distutils novice.  I can't for the life of me understand why
>the doc directory isn't included in the tar file.  As far as I can tell
>distutils has no explicit provision at all for distributing documentation,
>which seems very weird.  What am I missing?

A MANIFEST.in file specifying what to include.  Distutils requires 
one for docs.  Note that the data_files option is for *installing* 
data files to e.g. /usr/share; if you're doing that you should 
probably have a bit more structure to what you install there than 
just dumping lockfile.rst in /usr/share/doc (which is what I think 
the above setup does).

Distutils isn't very bright about putting things in an sdist unless 
you specify them in MANIFEST.in in some way.  Setuptools is a bit 
smarter, in that it includes stuff under revision control (CVS, svn, 
or anything you've installed a file finder plugin for.)