Setting proper python setup script

Question

I have a huge problem to create proper python setup script. My folder structure looks like this:

my_project/
    my_project/
        --__init__.py
        --file_1.py
        --file_2.py
        --file_3.py
    -AUTHORS
    -CHANGELOG
    -INSTALL
    -LICENSE
    -README.rst
    -setup.cfg
    -setup.py

I have created a setup script, but it does not behave like I want to. The setup script:

from ez_setup import use_setuptools
use_setuptools()
import os
import sys
from setuptools import setup, find_packages
readme_file = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'README.rst')
try:
    long_description = open(readme_file).read()
except IOError, err:
    sys.stderr.write("[ERROR] Cannot find file specified as ""``long_description`` (%s)\n" % readme_file)
    sys.exit(1)
setup(
    name = 'my_project',
    version='0.0.1',
    author = 'AUTHOR',
    author_email = 'CONTACT',
    url = 'http://example.com',
    description= 'Some description',
    long_description = long_description,
    packages = find_packages('my_project'),
    package_dir = {'':'my_project'},
        package_data = {'':['*.py']},
    include_package_data = True,
    scripts = [],
    requires = [],
    license = 'BSD License',
    install_requires = [
        'some_packages',
    ],
    classifiers = [
        'Development Status :: 2 - Pre-Alpha',
        'Environment :: Web Environment',
        'Intended Audience :: Developers',
        'License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License',
        'Operating System :: OS Independent',
        'Programming Language :: Python',
        'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.6',
        'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7',
        'Topic :: Database',
        'Topic :: Internet',
        'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules',
    ],
    keywords = 'python, setup, script, the best',
)

After this:

sudo python setup.py alias release register sdist bdist_egg upload
sudo python setup.py release

Everything is fine, up to this point, but when I try:

sudo pip install my_project

I only get in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ a folder called my_project-0.0.1.egg-info/, but there are no my_project with init, file_1, file_2, file_3 python files.

I know that my_project-0.0.1.egg-info/ is required, but where are my files?

Then I tried:

sudo python setup.py install

With no effect, but this time I got a folder my_project-0.0.1-py2.7.egg.

I want to get in /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/ two directories:

- my_project-0.0.1.egg-info/
- my_project with my files

My questions:

1. What am I doing wrong?
2. How can I resolve it?
3. Maybe when I try to use distutils instead of setuptools it can help me?

Answer 1

Your problem is in this line:

package_dir = {'':'my_project'},

You're telling it that my_project is the place to find top-level packages. So, find_packages('my_project') is going to look for a package inside your top-level directory (my_project) at my_project/my_project. Since there is no such thing, you end up with an empty package.

Just remove that line, and everything will work.

---

While we're at it, you're over-complicating things a little bit. You're not using anything out of ez_setup, so it would be simpler to remove the first two lines. And you're just adding a single static package, so there's really no reason to use find_packages; you can just use packages = ['my_project'] instead.

---

Meanwhile, here's how to debug stuff yourself in the future.

First, don't try sudo python setup.py alias release register sdist bdist_egg upload until you've actually got things working. It's a lot easier to debug local files than something you've already uploaded to PyPI. Just do python setup.py sdist, then you can look at the resulting tarball and make sure it looks OK, then try pip install . and/or pip install dist/my_project-0.0.1.tar.gz to make sure it actually works.

Second, setup.py is just normal Python code; you can always log things to see what's going on. For example, if find_packages('my_project') doesn't seem to be working right, try doing a print(find_packages('my_project')) before the setup(…) to see what it's doing.