Python in a Nutshell

Name

data_files

Synopsis

data_files=[ list of pairs (target_directory,[list of files]) ]

The value of keyword argument data_files is a list of pairs. Each pair’s first item is a string and names a target directory (i.e., a directory where distutils places data files when installing the distribution); the second item is the list of file path strings for files to put in the target directory. At installation time, distutils places each target directory as a subdirectory of Python’s sys.prefix for a pure distribution, or of Python’s sys.exec_prefix for a non-pure distribution. distutils places the given files directly in the respective target directory, never in subdirectories of the target. For example, given the following data_files usage:

data_files = [ ('miscdata', ['conf/config.txt',
    'misc/sample.txt']) ]

distutils includes in the distribution the file config.txt from sub-directory conf of the distribution root, and the file sample.txt from subdirectory misc of the distribution root. At installation time, distutils creates a subdirectory named miscdata in Python’s sys.prefix directory (or in the sys.exec_prefix directory, if the distribution is non-pure), and copies the two files into miscdata/config.txt and miscdata/sample.txt.