How to include symlinks in a python wheel?

[dranobob]

I have a python package that I want to include some specific files from a submodule without including the entire package, so the structure looks like:

foo_project
 |
 +-- submodule_files
     +-- bar.json
     +-- other_stuff
 +-- foo
     +-- __init__.py
     +-- foo.py
     +-- <symlink to bar.json>

The poetry toml file has

packages = [
    { include = "foo" }
]

When the wheel is created using poetry build, the linked files are copied, but not the links themselves

 foo_wheel
 |
 +-- submodule_files
     +-- bar.json
 +-- foo
     +-- __init__.py
     +-- foo.py

(left out info directory in wheel for brevity)

Therefore once installed, the python package is missing the extra files

[jaghaimo]

Struggling with this as well - did you even find out how? So far, the best I could do was a post-install script that recreates the missing symlinks.

[neersighted]

This is not possible per the wheel standard.

[arcivanov]

It's possible with wheel-axle, a drop-in replacement for wheels: https://github.com/karellen/wheel-axle