Build Failure: "Multiple top-level packages" error prevents standard pip install on Windows

[AviJxn]

Attempting to install the package via pip install . fails on standard Windows environments (and potentially other fresh envs) with a setuptools configuration error. The build system detects multiple top-level packages (backend, frontend, data_processing) and cannot determine the package root because the layout is flat/ambiguous.

Clone the repository on a Windows machine.
Create a fresh virtual environment (Python 3.11).
Run pip install .

Expected Behavior

The package should install successfully.

Actual Behavior

Installation crashes with: error: Multiple top-level packages discovered in a flat-layout

Proposed Solution

I have identified a fix by explicitly configuring [tool.setuptools.packages.find] in pyproject.toml. I will submit a PR shortly.

[rajnisk]

Hi @AviJxn, thanks for looking into this!

I agree that the Multiple top-level packages error needs to be fixed to support standard installations. However, I noticed that your proposed config attempts to include frontend as a Python package:

include = ["backend*", "frontend*", "data_processing*"]

The frontend directory is actually a Node.js/React project (containing
package.json, tsconfig.json, etc.) rather than a Python package, so it shouldn't be included in the Python build artifacts.

I would suggest a more explicit approach to avoid accidentally packaging non-Python code:

[tool.setuptools]
packages = ["backend", "data_processing"]

This explicitly defines the valid Python packages for the project and solves the ambiguity error without risking the inclusion of the frontend source code.

Let me know what you think!

[AviJxn]

@0rajnishk Thanks for the catch! You are absolutely right, including the frontend artifacts in the Python build was unintentional.
I have updated the configuration to explicitly list packages = ["backend", "data_processing"] as suggested. This should ensure a clean Python build.