Add Folders And Subfolders Outside Of Main Module Using Setuptools(setup.py)

So it is yet another similar looking but different question than setuptools: adding additional files outside package and Including non-Python files with setup.py. I have structure

Solution 1:

I believe something like the following could get you there:

.
├── data
│   ├── file.txt
│   └── foo
│       ├── bar
│       │   └── file.txt
│       └── file.txt
├── MANIFEST.in
├── setup.cfg
├── setup.py
└── src
    └── thing
        ├── __init__.py
        └── nothing
            └── __init__.py

MANIFEST.in

# ...
recursive-include data *.txt

setup.py

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import pathlib
import setuptools

def main():
    data_packages = [
        'thing/{}'.format(p).replace('/', '.')
        for p
        in pathlib.Path('data').glob('**')
    ]
    packages = setuptools.find_packages(where='src')
    package_dir = {
        'thing': 'src/thing',
        'thing.data': 'data'
    }

    setuptools.setup(
        # see 'setup.cfg'
        packages=packages + data_packages,
        package_dir=package_dir,
        include_package_data=True,
    )

if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

The *.txt are packaged as package data under the thing.data package of the Python project. The data can be read for example like this:

python3 -c "import pkgutil; print(pkgutil.get_data('thing', 'data/foo/bar/file.txt').decode())"