Python distutils error: "[directory]... doesn't exist or not a regular file"

Let's take the following project layout:

$ ls -R .
.:
package  setup.py

./package:
__init__.py  dir  file.dat  module.py

./package/dir:
tool1.dat  tool2.dat

And the following content for setup.py:

$ cat setup.py 
from distutils.core import setup


setup(name='pyproj',
      version='0.1',

      pac开发者_开发知识库kages=[
          'package',
      ],
      package_data={
          'package': [
              '*',
              'dir/*',
          ],
      },
     )

As you can see, I want to include all non-Python files in package/ and package/dir/ directories. However, running setup.py install would raise the following error:

$ python setup.py install
running install
running build
running build_py
creating build
creating build/lib
creating build/lib/package
copying package/module.py -> build/lib/package
copying package/__init__.py -> build/lib/package
error: can't copy 'package/dir': doesn't exist or not a regular file

What gives?

In your package_data, your '*' glob will match package/dir itself, and try to copy that dir as a file, resulting in a failure. Find a glob that won't match the directory package/dir, rewriting your setup.py along these lines:

from distutils.core import setup

setup(name='pyproj',
      version='0.1',

      packages=[
          'package',
      ],
      package_data={
          'package': [
              '*.dat',
              'dir/*'
          ],
      },
     )

Given your example, that's just changing '*' to '*.dat', although you'd probably need to refine your glob more than that, just ensure it won't match 'dir'

You could use Distribute instead of distutils. It works basically the same (for the most part, you will not have to change your setup.py) and it gives you the exclude_package_data option:

from distribute_setup import use_setuptools
use_setuptools()

from setuptools import setup

setup(name='pyproj',
      version='0.1',

      packages=[
          'package',
      ],
      package_data={
          'package': [
              '*.dat',
              'dir/*'
          ],
      },
      exclude_package_data={
          'package': [
              'dir'
          ],
      },
     )

I created a function that gives me all the files that I need

def find_files(directory, strip):
  """
  Using glob patterns in ``package_data`` that matches a directory can
  result in setuptools trying to install that directory as a file and
  the installation to fail.

  This function walks over the contents of *directory* and returns a list
  of only filenames found. The filenames will be stripped of the *strip*
  directory part.
  """

  result = []
  for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
    for filename in files:
      filename = os.path.join(root, filename)
      result.append(os.path.relpath(filename, strip))
  return result

And used that as arugment for package_data

Not quite sure why, but after some troubleshooting I realised that renaming the directories that had dots in their names solved the problem. E.g.

chart.js-2.4.0 => chart_js-2_4_0

Note: I'm using Python 2.7.10, SetupTools 12.2