[BUG] package_dir in setuptools.setup() does not work as expected when installing with editable option

setuptools version

56.0.0

Python version

Python 3.8.5

OS

Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS (Bionic Beaver)

Additional environment information

No response

Description

Hello,

I followed the instructions in https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/blob/main/docs/deprecated/distutils/setupscript.rst#listing-whole-packages by using

setuptools.setup(
    ...
    package_dir={'awesome_pkg': 'my_awesome_package'}
    package=['awesome_pkg']
)

in order to package my_awesome_package and later use it import awesome_pkg after install.

But this unfortunately didn’t work.

Later I found out the reason is because I’ve installed the package with editable pip install -e . option. It’s working without the -e. I was unable to find any documentation on this and I would consider it as a hidden bug / discrepancy of the API (please correct me if I’m wrong).

I have the following path structure:

setup.py
my_awesome_pkg/
    __init__.py
    module_1/
        __init__.py
        ...
    module_2/
        __init__.py
        ...

Expected behavior

import awesome_pkg should work with the package installed by pip install -e option

How to Reproduce

Please refer to bug report.

Output

<ipython-input-1-25a6a57694c2> in <module>
----> 1 import awesome_package
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'awesome_package'

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the PSF Code of Conduct

[cvcore]

Related: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/64838393/package-dir-in-setup-py-not-working-as-expected

[pganssle]

I cannot reproduce this, can you give a more complete reproducer?

Here’s my setup.py:

import setuptools

setuptools.setup(
    name="awesome_pkg",
    version="0.0.1",
    package_dir={'awesome_pkg': 'my_awesome_package'},
    package=['awesome_pkg'],
)

Here’s how I created the directory structure:

mkdir -p my_awesome_pkg/mod1
touch my_awesome_pkg/__init__.py
touch my_awesome_pkg/mod1/__init__.py

If I do pip install . and then cd $(mktemp -d) (so that I’m not in a directory containing my_awesome_pkg), then python -c "import awesome_pkg" and python -c "import my_awesome_pkg" both fail.

If I run pip install -e . then cd $(mktemp -d), I am able to import my_awesome_pkg but not awesome_pkg, which is understandable considering that setup.py develop is a monstrous hack and should probably not be counted on to have any particular semantics, but that seems to be the opposite of the behavior you are describing.