Python – MANIFEST.in ignored on “python setup.py install” – no data files installed

Here's my stripped-down setup.py script with non-code stuff removed:

#!/usr/bin/env python

from distutils.core import setup
from whyteboard.misc import meta


setup(
    name = 'Whyteboard',
    version = meta.version,

    packages = ['whyteboard', 'whyteboard.gui', 'whyteboard.lib', 'whyteboard.lib.pubsub',
                'whyteboard.lib.pubsub.core', 'whyteboard.lib.pubsub.utils', 'whyteboard.misc'],

    py_modules = ['whyteboard'],
    scripts = ['whyteboard.py'],
)

MANIFEST.in:

include *.txt
include whyteboard-help/*.*
recursive-include locale *.mo
recursive-include images *.png

When I run "python setup.py install sdist" I get a nice .tar.gz with a "whyteboard-0.41" root folder, with my locale/ images/ and whyteboard-help/ folders inside. This also has my whyteboard.py script that launches my program from inside the whyteboard source package.

So:

whyteboard/
 ├── locale/
 ├── images
 ├── whyteboard-help/
 ├── whyteboard/
 │  ├── __init__.py
 │  └── other packages etc
 ├── whyteboard.py
 ├── README
 ├── setup.py
 └── CHANGELOG

This mirrors the source of my program, is how everything should be, and is correct.

However when I run "python setup.py install" none of my data files are written – only the "whyteboard" source package, and the whyteboard.py is placed in /usr/local/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/.

Ideally, I'd like the same directory structure as what's been generated in the .tar.gz file to be created in dist-packages, as this is how my program expects to look for its resources.

How can I get "install" to create this directory structure? It seems to be ignoring my manifest file, as far as I can tell.