make distutils in Python automatically find packages

Question

When describing a python package in setup.py in distutils in Python, is there a way to make it so automatically get every directory that has a __init__.py in it and include that as a subpackage?

ie if the structure is:

mypackage/__init__.py
mypackage/a/__init__.py
mypackage/b/__init__.py

I want to avoid doing:

packages = ['mypackage', 'mypackage.a', 'mypackage.b']

and instead just do:

packages = ['mypackage']

and have it automatically find things like a and b since they have an init file. thanks.

Answer 1

The easiest way (that I know of) is to use pkgutil.walk_packages to yield the packages:

from distutils.core import setup
from pkgutil import walk_packages

import mypackage

def find_packages(path=__path__, prefix=""):
    yield prefix
    prefix = prefix + "."
    for _, name, ispkg in walk_packages(path, prefix):
        if ispkg:
            yield name

setup(
    # ... snip ...
    packages = list(find_packages(mypackage.__path__, mypackage.__name__)),
    # ... snip ...
)