Data directories not included in wheel

[octane64]

When creating a build for a simple project layout like the following:

project_name

• project_name/
  ---init.py
  --- main.py
  --- module1.py
• data/
  --- database.db
  --- samplefile.csv
• README.md
• pyproject.toml

Source dist will include data directory alongside project_name dir but wheel will only include project_name dir

[bpabel]

You have to include data inside your package directory (project_name/data). pip purposefully makes it difficult to install anything outside the package install directory for security reasons.

[octane64]

But data is indeed inside the package directory (outer project_name dir).
You mean data should be inside the inner project_name dir?

[takluyver]

Yup, you need it in the inner directory alongside __init__.py - this is the importable module that will get installed. We don't want to install random .../site-packages/data directories.

Other Python packaging tools provide a way to install files to other locations - setuptools calls this data_files. It's not currently supported in Flit, because I think the situations where you actually need it are limited, and Flit is focused on the simple cases. See #358 for discussion over whether that should be added.