Python eggs and missing files (like ‘docs’)

// under build docs egg file install missing problem python

This is pretty trivial (and trivial to fix), but I’m chronicling it for my knowledge as much as anyone else’s.  The issue is that a given Python egg is missing some form of files, most commonly the ‘docs’ directory in my experience, because the build wasn’t configured correctly.

The error goes somewhat like this:

Getting distribution for 'my.theme'.
error: docs/HISTORY.txt: No such file or directory
An error occured when trying to install my.theme 1.5.0. Look above this message for any errors that were output by easy_install.

The solution is simple: just add the relevant missing directories or similar into your my.theme/MANIFEST.in file, so the end results looks like so:

recursive-include docs *
recursive-include my *
global-exclude *py[co], *mo

where my and docs are the top-level packages I need.

Just rebuild the Python egg and away we go. As I said, simple fix. Now just have to get it stuck in my head to remember.

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