[Distutils] Installing header files with setuptools

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 11:30 PM 3/2/2010, James Porter wrote:
>Perhaps this is a bug or perhaps I'm just doing it wrong, but I 
>can't figure out a good way to install C header files as part of a 
>setuptools project.
>
>With distutils, there's a "headers" argument to setup() that 
>installs the header files in their proper spot, but setuptools 
>ignores this. It looks like setuptools is hijacking the install 
>command and manually running install_lib, install_data, etc, but 
>never install_headers.

Egg-based installs don't include headers.  However, if you use the 
--root or --single-version-externally-managed options to "setup.py 
install", a backwards-compatible, non-egg-based installation is done, 
and the headers should be included in that case.  This installation 
mode is used by default when building other types of binary 
distribution, such as RPMs.