[Distutils] Including symlinked data files in an egg

[Wichert Akkerman]

On 4/20/11 18:04 , P.J. Eby wrote:
> At 10:56 AM 4/20/2011 +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>> On 12/16/10 00:52 , P.J. Eby wrote:
>>> At 04:18 PM 12/15/2010 +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>>>> On 12/15/10 16:15 , P.J. Eby wrote:
>>>>> Most likely, the problem is with the file finder being used. Are you
>>>>> using a git plugin for setuptools, or simply listing everything in
>>>>> MANIFEST.in? If the former, it may be that the git plugin you're using
>>>>> simply doesn't support symlinks. If you're not using a git plugin,
>>>>> perhaps there is something amiss in the MANIFEST.in, and setuptools'
>>>>> built-in support for subversion is hiding the problem by picking up
>>>>> the
>>>>> symlinks.
>>>>
>>>> I am not using a git (or other) plugin. I tried listing things in
>>>> MANIFEST.in, for example using:
>>>>
>>>> graft my/package/templates/
>>>> graft my/package/templates/libraries
>>>>
>>>> unfortunately that had no effect: libraries was not included, not as
>>>> symlink nor as a copy of the symlink target.
>>>
>>> I don't know whether MANIFEST.in is supposed to support symlinks or not,
>>> but the fact that it's working with subversion is strongly indicative
>>> that setuptools' file finder is picking up stuff that MANIFEST.in is
>>> not.
>>>
>>> I don't know *why* MANIFEST.in wouldn't pick up symlinks, though.
>>> Perhaps you could try boiling this down to a simpler test case (e.g.,
>>> subversion and git versions of the same minimal package containing only
>>> a symlink referred to by MANIFEST.in) so we can narrow it down some
>>> more?
>>
>> I've finally gotten around to doing this. I have attached test.tar.gz
>> with a minimal package that demonstrates this.
>
> Ah. It appears MANIFEST.in simply doesn't support symlinks. (Distutils
> has explicit code to filter them out, in fact.) This is a distutils
> issue, which setuptools can't do anything about.

Is there another way to get this working? I'ld hate to have to resort to 
monkeypatching distutils.

Wichert.