Setup.py: When to use "**/"

General Discussion
1

In “setup.py” files, it sometimes seems that file-patterns work best when prepended with “**/”, and sometimes seem fine without it. Is there any information on which circumstances call for “**/”, and which don’t?

2

**/ means “under any directory or subdirectory”. It means it will pick up files named like that anywhere in the directory hierarchy.

/ refers to the root of the filesystem.

3

Hmm… So do I understand correctly then that “/" should be used in any case in which I want the pattern to match within any part of my game’s directory hierarchy, but that if I want to specify files within a specific directory–and it’s sub-directories?–then "/” is not required?

For example, suppose that I had the following:

"include_patterns" : [
                "**/*.png",
                "Sounds/*"
            ],

It should then include png-files from any directory, and all files within the “Sounds” directory, or any sub-directories that “Sounds” might have–correct?

Furthermore, if I were to instead specify the following:

"include_patterns" : [
                "*.png",
                "Sounds/*"
            ],

(That is, the same, but without “**/” in the first entry.) Would I then be correct in understanding that it would only match png-files within the main project-directory, but not in sub-directories?

4

I think this is right, yeah.

Indeed.

5

Ah, great–thank you for the confirmation! :slight_smile: