[Distutils] distlib and data files => resources ?

[Eric V. Smith]

On 11/20/2012 3:18 AM, Ronald Oussoren wrote:

> 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.

I would say this is the central point of the issue. I'd add that
installing files outside of package directories may be desirable when
installing into an installed python's site-packages. This might be when
using "setup.py install", or when using a system installer.

Also remember that there maybe be multiple locations involved: image 2
different buildouts, using the same python, with different versions of
the same package. Also, there may be multiple python installations, each
with its own site-packages. You wouldn't necessarily want either of
those writing files to /etc, for example.

So it seems to me you'd want this to be an install-time option: "install
this library in a given location, but don't write files outside of
site-packages", or "install this library in a given location, but do
write files outside of site-packages". The "given location" might be in
a virtualenv, a buildout, the system python's site-packages, or some
other python's site-packages.

I realize that for some systems, "site-packages" isn't the correct term,
but it's close enough. I use it to mean "some place on sys.path that
will be searched by default, for a given python installation".

-- 
Eric.