Re: Specifying ‘--install-data’ for each binary package

[Ben Finney <ben+debian@benfinney.id.au>]

Éric Araujo <merwok@netwok.org> writes:

> Are you sure?  package_data files are installed alongside the Python
> modules; I think --data-files only controls the files declared as
> data_files.

In that case, I currently have no good solution. I had hoped to use some
Python standard-library resource access function to find the files
wherever they are installed.

But my understanding is that, unlike ‘package_data’, the ‘data_files’
option causes files to be installed to a location that is not
discoverable by the resulting library using Python's resource-access
functions. Is that right?


Currently the upstream Python code uses ‘os.path.dirname(__file__)’ and
the like to discover the location of the data files. It thereby assumes
that the package data is installed to the same location as the Python
code.

I've reported Bug#721676 for the problem in this particular package.

I will need to patch the upstream code, so that instead it seeks the
data files in the correct location. I had hoped to use Python's standard
library (Distutils? Distribute? Something else?) to access the resources
once installed to the correct location.

Is there a way to do that, or is this a problem still unsolved in Python?

-- 
 \           “It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us in |
  `\    trouble. It's the things we know that ain't so.” —Artemus Ward |
_o__)                                     (1834–1867), U.S. journalist |
Ben Finney