# 2.6 Installing Package Data

Often, additional files need to be installed into a package. These files are often data that's closely related to the package's implementation, or text files containing documentation that might be of interest to programmers using the package. These files are called package data.

Package data can be added to packages using the `package_data` keyword argument to the `setup()` function. The value must be a mapping from package name to a list of relative path names that should be copied into the package. The paths are interpreted as relative to the directory containing the package (information from the `package_dir` mapping is used if appropriate); that is, the files are expected to be part of the package in the source directories. They may contain glob patterns as well.

The path names may contain directory portions; any necessary directories will be created in the installation.

For example, if a package should contain a subdirectory with several data files, the files can be arranged like this in the source tree:

    setup.py
    src/
        mypkg/
            __init__.py
            module.py
            data/
                tables.dat
                spoons.dat
                forks.dat

The corresponding call to `setup()` might be:

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

New in version 2.4.