the 'right way' to distribute and access data files in a packaged Python module

[David Moss]

Hi,

I'm the author of netaddr :-

    http://pypi.python.org/pypi/netaddr/0.6

For release 0.6 I've added setuptools support so it can be distributed
as a Python egg package using the easy_install tool.

In 0.6, I've started bundling some data files from IEEE and IANA with
the code below the site-packages install path (lib/site-packages/
netaddr/...). netaddr accesses and parses these files on module load
to provide various IP and MAC address related information via its API.

This mechanism works for the setuptools based packages because on
install they extract to the filesystem and can be accessed using
something like :-

    >>> index = open(os.path.join(__file__, 'oui.idx'))

However, setuptools seems to perform some magic for module imports
which prevents me from accessing these files directly as they are
bundled inside an egg (zip) file :-(

Two questions arise out of this situation :-

1) is there a better way to distribute the files, i.e. should I be
using a different more correct path instead of site-packages for data?
If so, where is this and how do I add it to my setup scripts and code?

2) is there an easy (and portable) way for me to dive inside an egg
file to access the data I required (ugly but workable). I'm assuming
I'd need to check for the presence of setuptools available with the
Python interpreter etc.

My users and I would be grateful for and help and advice.

Many thanks,

Dave M.