another distutils question

[Eric S. Johansson]

Keith Perkins wrote:
> 
> On a similar note , I have another question about distutils and data files.
> I have a little program that uses a txt file to store data, and it works
> fine running it in it's own folder, if I install through distutils, using
> sudo to get it to write to the site-packages folder (which root owns), it
> installs the data file so that it is owned by root, and not by me, so
> that the data file can't be written to (although the script can read it).
> Do I need to run a post install script, or add something to setup.py file
> to chown the file or am I doing something wrong?  There doesn't seem to be
> anything on this in the docs.  

1: as pointed out, site-packages is for code only :-)

2: you will need a post processing script.

here is an example of distutils abuse that may help a little bit.  I 
needed to collect files from a file hierarchy and one other place in the 
source directory then stuff them in the right place in the production 
directory.   Since the pattern  was unpredictable, I built a method to 
accumulate data file references.

the solution is a bit more hard coded than I like but it gets the job 
done for now.  as I need to improve it, I'll fix it.

def expand_hierarchy(starting_point, data_files):
     dir_files = os.walk(starting_point)

     for (path, name, files) in dir_files:
         x = os.path.basename(path)
         if x != 'CVS':
             clean_files = [ os.path.join(path,item) \
                             for item in files \
                                 if (clean_test(item)) ]
             data_files.append((cr_paths%path,clean_files))

     return data_files

setup(...
       data_files=expand_hierarchy("web-ui",
                                   [(cr_paths%'etc', 

                                   ['ancillary/baseline_configuration']),
                                    ],
                                   )


to solve the file perms problem you run something after setup.  how you 
  associate perms/ownership with a file is up to you.  It might work to 
use data_files to enumerate files you apply the common perms/owernship. 
then special case what you need to.

hope this gives you some useful ideas.

--- eric