[Distutils] distlib and data files => resources ?

[Ronald Oussoren]

On 19 Nov, 2012, at 20:26, PJ Eby <pje at telecommunity.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> Data files should never be installed to package directories.  But I'm not aware of any good reason why resource files should ever be installed anywhere *else*.

To be (too) snarky: because the FHS says so. 

Less snarky, Linux distributors try to keep simular files together (for example storing all gettext translations together in /usr/share/locale).  To play nice in such an enviroment Python packages would have to install resource files outside of the python package and into the FHS specified directory structure.   That again would mean there needs to be an API to access such files because it is not always necessary to store resources separate from their python package and because the FHS linux specific.

Storing resource files outside of packages directories seems to be only relevant for software that's packaged by a Linux distribution, not for python packages installed into a virtualenv or on other platforms.

Ronald