[Distutils] how can I egt the packages and modules in a distribution?

[P.J. Eby]

At 11:32 PM 8/19/2010 +0100, Chris Withers wrote:
>P.J. Eby wrote:
>>>I'm trying to write a scanner than looks for SQLAlchemy table 
>>>objects and it would be great to be able to pass a distribution 
>>>name rather than a set of dotted package names...
>>get_distribution('projectname').get_metadata('top_level.txt').splitlines() 
>>will return you a list of top-level package or module names 
>>provided by the package.
>
>Ah, okay. I assume this will only work for packages that use setuptools?

Or distribute.  Or pip (I assume).  Anything but plain distutils, basically.


>I assume this is only a problem for namespace packages?
>(ie: if so packages each supply part of a namespace, they will both 
>have the namespace listed in top_level.txt, right?)

Correct.


>How do static resources returned with 
>pkg_resources.resource_filename and friends fare when packages are 
>installed in a "flat" form?

They go in the same relative location as they would in an egg, it's 
just that in flat layouts everyone's files are in the same namespace.

Sort of a "scrambled egg", if you will.  ;-)