Generating files for sdist

Question

I'm looking for a way to generate and include a file into the package created by sdist/wheel.

Is there some way to hook into the process to create a new file that will be picked up during the build.

Answer 1

To build a file during build phase override cmdclass. See https://stackoverflow.com/a/43728788/7976758:

import distutils.command.build

# Override build command
class BuildCommand(distutils.command.build.build):

    def run(self):
        # Run the original build command
        distutils.command.build.build.run(self)
        # Custom build stuff goes here

# Replace the build command with ours
setup(...,
      cmdclass={"build": BuildCommand})

To include a non-code file in a sdist list in in MANIFEST or MANIFEST.in. See https://docs.python.org/3/distutils/sourcedist.html#specifying-the-files-to-distribute

To include a non-code file in a wheel list it as package_data in your setup.py. See https://docs.python.org/3/distutils/setupscript.html#installing-package-data:

setup(...,
      packages=['mypkg'],
      package_data={'mypkg': ['*.dat']},
      )