If I have a file structure like this:

mydir/
  ├── myfile.txt
  └── myscript.py

I can access myfile.txt within myscript.py like so:

import os

dir = os.path.dirname(__file__)

with open(dir + "myfile.txt") as f:
    ...
    # Do something

How do I replicate this behavior if I add an __init__.py file and build mydir as a distributable package? Does it depend on how you build the distribution?

I’m very new to writing packages and so far I’ve only ever used setuptools to create a package that I could pip install on my local machine. I’ve done this before with yaml files, using include_package_date=True in my setup.py file. I used something like this within the package to access yaml files:

import pkgutil
import yaml

def _open_internal_yaml(internal_yaml_path) -> str:
    yaml_bytes: bytes | None = pkgutil.get_data(
        __name__, internal_yaml_path
    )
    if yaml_bytes is None:
        raise Exception(
            "Something went wrong with call to `pkgutil.get_data`.n"
            f"Got 'None' when loading '{internal_yaml_path}'."
        )
    yml = yaml.safe_load(yaml_bytes.decode())
    return yml

where internal_yaml_path is relative to the directory of the file that holds the above code.

Is there a more efficient or pythonic way to do this?