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PODetermining the location of distutils data files programmatically in Python
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copied!<p>I'm trying to include data files in distutils for my package and then refer to them using relative paths (following <a href="http://docs.python.org/distutils/setupscript.html#distutils-additional-files">http://docs.python.org/distutils/setupscript.html#distutils-additional-files</a>)</p> <p>My dir structure is:</p> <pre><code>myproject/ mycode.py data/ file1.dat </code></pre> <p>the code in <code>mycode.py</code>, which is actually a script in the package. It relies on accessing <code>data/file1.dat</code>, refer to it using that relative path. In <code>setup.py</code>, I have:</p> <pre><code>setup( ... scripts = "myproject/mycode.py" data_files = [('data', 'myproject/data/file1.dat')] ) </code></pre> <p>suppose the user now uses:</p> <pre><code>python setup.py --prefix=/home/user/ </code></pre> <p>Then <code>mycode.py</code> will appear in some place like <code>/home/user/bin/</code>. But the reference to <code>data/file1.dat</code> is now broken, since the script lives elsewhere from the data.</p> <p>How can I find out, from <code>mycode.py</code>, the absolute path to <code>myproject/data/file1.dat</code>, so I can refer to it properly depending on where the user installed the package?</p> <p><strong>EDIT</strong><br> When I install this with <code>prefix=/home/user/</code>, I get <code>data/file1.dat</code> created in <code>/home/user/</code> which is exactly what I want, the only missing piece is how to retrieve the absolute path to this file programmatically, given only a relative path and not knowing where the user installed the package. When I try to use <code>package_data</code> instead of <code>data_files</code>, it does not work - I simply don't get <code>data/file1.dat</code> created anywhere, even if I delete my <code>MANIFEST</code> file. </p> <p>I've read all the of the current discussions of this apparently very common problem. All the proposed solutions however are not dealing with the case I have a above, <strong>where the code that needs to access <code>data_files</code> is a script</strong> and its location might change depending on the <code>--prefix</code> argument to <code>setup.py</code>. The only hack I can think of to resolve this is to add the data file to <code>scripts=</code> in <code>setup()</code>, as in:</p> <pre><code>setup( ... scripts = ["myproject/mycode.py", "myproject/data/file1.data"] ) </code></pre> <p>this is a horrible hack but it is the only way I can think of to ensure that <code>file1.data</code> will be in the same place as the scripts defined in <code>scripts=</code>, since I cannot find any platform independent and installation sensitive API to recover the location of <code>data_files</code> after the user ran <code>setup.py install</code> (potentially with <code>--prefix=</code> args).</p>

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