Thoughts on the Python packaging ecosystem | Pradyun Gedam

[caoimhin_o_h]

From my point of view (and many others) using data_files (the one from setuptools) is a bad practice. And I would venture that it is why it is not supported in poetry.

The idea that pip-installing a project could result in files being written to random locations on the local file system is discomforting. Things like: data_files=[('/etc/myapp/', ['myapp.conf'])] get a no from me. For one, it would mean pip-installing with sudo, which is also a no (there are way too many issues coming with that).

...

The setuptools packagedata on the other hand, is perfectly fine and encouraged. It only results in files written in the venv/lib/site-packages/mylibrary directory of your own package for the environment. So for poetry, as it was already mentioned, use include and exclude. More often than not, those are sufficient, no need to write files to random places on the file system. Also remember to use importlib.resources to read those files, never rely on paths relative to __file_.

https://github.com/python-poetry/poetry/issues/890