Why are some of my files not available in the installation of my python module packaged using setuptools?

Question

So I have made a small application that I typically want to package and share it with the world. I read the tutorials for packaging my app using setuptools. It was going well until I got stuck at one place.

My directory structure is something like this:

- MyApp
  - setup.py
  - README.md
  - LICENSE.txt
  - MANIFEST.in
  - myapp
    - __init__.py
    - index.py
    - utils
      - __init__.py
      - helper.py
      - some_dump.pickle
      - images
        - folder_1
          - image_1.jpg
          - image_2.jpg
        - folder_2
          - another_image_1.jpg
          - another_image_2.jpg
      - sounds
        - sound_1.wav
        - sound_2.wav

Given this directory structure, I have created the setup.py file with the packages option as the list containing myapp and myapp.utils. I have also created a MANIFEST.in file that will have all the files that I want to package but which are not included by default. Here is the content of the manifest file:

include README.md
include LICENSE.txt
include myapp/utils/*.pickle
include myapp/utils/sounds/*.wav
include myapp/utils/images/folder_1/*.jpg
include myapp/utils/images/folder_2/*.jpg

The problem is that all these files are created as required in the distribution package (.zip), but when I try to use the distribution package to try the install the package myself, I don't see the images, sounds or the pickle file. i.e. when I run python setup.py install, I don't see these files in the build/lib folder. I am not sure what the reason is. Could anyone help me out with this?

Thanks

Answer 1

The manifest is about distribution, not about installation. You need to specify in setup.py what to install and WHERE:

setup(...,
  data_files=[(whereto1, [file1, file2]),
              (whereto2, [file3])]
 )

See http://docs.python.org/3/distutils/setupscript.html#installing-additional-files