Python setup.py: How to get find_packages() to identify packages in subdirectories

This is like using the src-layout for the “foo” and “bar” packages, but the flat layout for “baz”. It’s possible, but requires some custom configuration in the setup.py.

Setuptools’ find_packages supports a “where” keyword (docs), you can use that.

setup(
    ...
    packages=(
        find_packages() +
        find_packages(where="./bar-pack") +
        find_packages(where="./foo-pack")
    ),
    ...
)

Since find_packages returns a plain old list, you could also just list your packages manually, and that’s arguably easier / less magical.

setup(
    ...
    packages=["baz", "bar", "foo"],
    ...
)

The non-standard directory structure means you’ll also want to specify the package_dir structure for distutils, which describes where to put the installed package(s).

Piecing it all together:

setup(
    name="mypackage",
    version="0.1",
    packages=["baz", "bar", "foo"],
    package_dir={
        "": ".",
        "bar": "./bar-pack/bar",
        "foo": "./foo-pack/foo",
    },
)

The above installer will create this directory structure in site-packages:

.venv/lib/python3.9/site-packages
├── bar
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── __pycache__
│       └── __init__.cpython-39.pyc
├── baz
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── __pycache__
│       └── __init__.cpython-39.pyc
├── foo
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── __pycache__
│       └── __init__.cpython-39.pyc
└── mypackage-0.1.dist-info
    ├── INSTALLER
    ├── METADATA
    ├── RECORD
    ├── REQUESTED
    ├── WHEEL
    ├── direct_url.json
    └── top_level.txt