I'm trying to install python package in editable mode with:
pip3 install -e ./
setup.py file contains:
data_files=[
(os.path.expanduser("~") + "/.xxx", ["xxx/yyy.data"])
],
After installation the yyy.data file is not copied to .xxx folder.
Is there an option to create data files outside of the package folder when working in editable mode?
The truth is data_files has caveats. See No single, complete solution for packaging data issue on the list of Problems in Python Packaging, note in data_files section of Packaging and Distributing Project tutorial from Python Packaging User Guide, pip's bug All packages that contain non-package data are now likely installed in a broken way since 7.0.0 and wheel's bug bdist_wheel makes absolute data_files relative to site-packages.
According to information gathered from above sources your data was installed into site-packages directory instead of your home directory as you were expecting.