[Distutils] Including symlinked data files in an egg

[P.J. Eby]

At 10:56 AM 4/20/2011 +0200, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>On 12/16/10 00:52 , P.J. Eby wrote:
>>At 04:18 PM 12/15/2010 +0100, Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>>>On 12/15/10 16:15 , P.J. Eby wrote:
>>>>Most likely, the problem is with the file finder being used. Are you
>>>>using a git plugin for setuptools, or simply listing everything in
>>>>MANIFEST.in? If the former, it may be that the git plugin you're using
>>>>simply doesn't support symlinks. If you're not using a git plugin,
>>>>perhaps there is something amiss in the MANIFEST.in, and setuptools'
>>>>built-in support for subversion is hiding the problem by picking up the
>>>>symlinks.
>>>
>>>I am not using a git (or other) plugin. I tried listing things in
>>>MANIFEST.in, for example using:
>>>
>>>graft my/package/templates/
>>>graft my/package/templates/libraries
>>>
>>>unfortunately that had no effect: libraries was not included, not as
>>>symlink nor as a copy of the symlink target.
>>
>>I don't know whether MANIFEST.in is supposed to support symlinks or not,
>>but the fact that it's working with subversion is strongly indicative
>>that setuptools' file finder is picking up stuff that MANIFEST.in is not.
>>
>>I don't know *why* MANIFEST.in wouldn't pick up symlinks, though.
>>Perhaps you could try boiling this down to a simpler test case (e.g.,
>>subversion and git versions of the same minimal package containing only
>>a symlink referred to by MANIFEST.in) so we can narrow it down some more?
>
>I've finally gotten around to doing this. I have attached 
>test.tar.gz with a minimal package that demonstrates this.

Ah.  It appears MANIFEST.in simply doesn't support 
symlinks.  (Distutils has explicit code to filter them out, in 
fact.)  This is a distutils issue, which setuptools can't do anything about.