po-files included but not specified as data files

[buhtz]

I try to understand why po-files are included and installed in my package but I did not specified them as data files.

I have a custom build step that do use "msgfmt" to compile the po-files into mo-files. This seems to work. And this mo-files are specified as data-files and they are included.
But the po-files also. And that is what I don't want.

The original project is a technical demo and can be found here.

That is the original tree:

├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
├── setup.py
├── src
│   └── helloworld-int
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── __main__.py
│       └── po
│           ├── de.po
│           ├── jp.po
│           └── messages.pot
└── tests
    ├── __init__.py
    └── test_dummy.py

That is the pyproject.toml where you can see that only the mo-files (generated in a custom build step) are included as data-files.

[build-system]
requires = [
    'setuptools',
]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

[project]
name = "helloworld-international"
version = "0.0.1"
description = """A demo translating Hello World in a GUI window."""
requires-python = ">=3.8"

dependencies = [
    "PySimpleGUI",
]

authors = [
    {name = "Christian Buhtz", email = "c.buhtz@posteo.jp"}
]

[project.urls]
homepage = "https://codeberg.org/buhtz/tech-demo-python-packaging"
repository = "https://codeberg.org/buhtz/tech-demo-python-packaging"

[project.scripts]
helloworldint = "helloworldint.__main__:main"

[tool.setuptools.package-dir]
helloworldint = 'src/helloworld-int'

[tool.setuptools.package-data]
# Directories not allowed. Files only.
helloworldint = [
    'locales/*/LC_MESSAGES/*.mo',
]

Here is some verbose output from pip install .

  adding 'helloworldint/__init__.py'
  adding 'helloworldint/__main__.py'
  adding 'helloworldint/locales/de/LC_MESSAGES/helloworldint.mo'
  adding 'helloworldint/locales/jp/LC_MESSAGES/helloworldint.mo'
  adding 'helloworldint/po/de.po'
  adding 'helloworldint/po/jp.po'
  adding 'helloworld_international-0.0.1.dist-info/METADATA'
  adding 'helloworld_international-0.0.1.dist-info/WHEEL'
  adding 'helloworld_international-0.0.1.dist-info/entry_points.txt'
  adding 'helloworld_international-0.0.1.dist-info/top_level.txt'
  adding 'helloworld_international-0.0.1.dist-info/RECORD'

[abravalheri]

I suspect this is probably because tool.setuptools.include-package-data default value in pyproject.toml is true. Isn't it the case?

When we were designing the support for pyproject.toml the feedback we received is that it was better to change the default of include-package-data to True because that is what most beginners would expect.
This and other changes in behaviour were made in order to steer the usage of pyproject.toml towards "convention over configuration".

I recently updated the https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/userguide/datafiles.html docs to make this more evident. I hope that helps.