Add data tutorial

Regenerating your package after adding the option ‘data’ will create a ‘pkgname_data’ in the ‘src’ directory:

(dvlpt)$ pmg add data
(dvlpt)$ pmg rg

Just copy all your data inside this directory and they will be packaged and installed along your package whatever method you choose to distribute your package:

(dvlpt)$ python setup.py sdist
(dvlpt)$ python setup.py install
(dvlpt)$ python setup.py develop
(dvlpt)$ python setup.py bdist_egg

Accessing data from inside the code

The recommended way to access data would be to use package_resources. However this method fail. Depending on the way you distribute your code, the path to your data will be changed. We choose a simple rough approach and, along the package_data directory, the ‘data’ option also create a ‘data_access.py’ file in your sources. To access ‘data’ you just need to call the ‘get_data_dir’ function and you’ll be returned with a valid pth to the package_data directory.