How to detect if module is installed in "editable mode"?

Question

I'm pip-installing my module like so:

cd my_working_dir
pip install -e .

When I later import the module from within Python, can I somehow detect if the module is installed in this editable mode?

Right now, I'm just checking if there's a .git folder in os.path.dirname(mymodule.__file__)) which, well, only works if there's actually a .git folder there. Is there a more reliable way?

Answer 1

Another workaround:

Place an "not to install" file into your package. This can be a README.md, or a not_to_install.txt file. Use any non-pythonic extension, to prevent that file installation. Then check if that file exists in your package.

The suggested source structure:

my_repo
|-- setup.py
`-- awesome_package
    |-- __init__.py
    |-- not_to_install.txt
    `-- awesome_module.py

setup.py:

# setup.py
from setuptools import setup, find_packages

setup(
    name='awesome_package',
    version='1.0.0',

    # find_packages() will ignore non-python files.
    packages=find_packages(),
)

The __init__.py or the awesome_module.py:

import os

# The current directory
__here__ = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))

# Place the following function into __init__.py or into awesome_module.py

def check_editable_installation():
    '''
        Returns true if the package was installed with the editable flag.
    '''
    not_to_install_exists = os.path.isfile(os.path.join(__here__, 'not_to_install.txt'))
    return not_to_install_exists