get site-packages folder from a python unittest

Question

I have a standard python proj package::

proj/
├── proj
│   ├── data
│   │   └── data.csv
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── lib.py
├── MANIFEST.in
├── setup.py
└── tests
    ├── __init__.py
    └── lib_test.py

data/data.csv is installed with MANIFEST.in and include_package_data key in setup.py::

~/proj$ more setup.py
 from setuptools import setup
 setup(name='proj',
       version=1.0,
       packages=['proj'],
       test_suite = 'tests',
       include_package_data=True,
       zip_safe=False)

~/proj$ more MANIFEST.in
include proj/data/*.csv

So after a python setup.py install data.csv is in the place I want in site-packages::

$ tree ~/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/proj-1.0-py2.7.egg
~/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/proj-1.0-py2.7.egg
├── EGG-INFO
│   └── ...
└── proj
    ├── data
    │   └── data.csv
    ├── __init__.py
    └── ...

In setup.py, test_suite is declared, so when I call test from proj first folder, this work well::

~/proj$ python setup.py test
running test
...
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.000s
OK

I would like to use in my unitest the data.csv file from: ~/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/proj-1.0-py2.7.egg/proj/data/data.csv. In short a way to get ~/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/proj-1.0-py2.7.egg/proj/data/ folder.

With this code::

$ more tests/lib_test.py
import unittest, os, proj
from proj.lib import get_data
class TestUtils(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_get_data(self):
        datapath = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(proj.__file__)) + '/data'
        data = '{}/data.csv'.format(datapath)
        print '\n my data:', data

if __name__ == '__main__':
    unittest.main()

Using __file__ I only succed to get ~/sandbox/proj/proj/data/data.csv ::

$ python setup.py test
running test
...
test_get_data (tests.lib_test.TestUtils) ...
 my data: ~/sandbox/proj/proj/data/data.csv
ok
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 1 test in 0.000s

Answer 1

In fact

python setup.py test

does not load python package from the place python setup install put it (~/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages/proj-xxx), but from the place the python setup.py test is run.

That's why with:

import proj, os
os.path.abspath(proj.__file__)

we can't catch the site-package folder but only the working-copy files.