When creating a pip package, how do I exclude directories using Manifest.in?

Question

I am trying to create a pip package and when I create the package it always includes __pycache__ subdirectories. I am using MANIFEST.in to specify which file types should be included and that works well.

How do I tell MANIFEST.in to exclude specific folders anywhere in the package?

Edit: I am trying to exclude a directory, not just a file. There are several options in the manifest to exclude files, such as global-exclude or recursive-exclude. But there is no global-exclude-dir option, which is why I asked here.

My setup.py looks like this:

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

setup(
    name='my_package',
    version='0.0.1',
    install_requires=[
        'importlib-metadata; python_version == "3.8"',
    ],
    include_package_data=True,
    package_dir={"my_package": "contrib"},   # renamed src to contrib 
)

The manifest contains this:

global-include *.npy *.npz
global-include *.txt
# [+ current exclude-directory test]

The global-include commands are working as intended. I tried the following to exclude any __pycache__ directories (thanks @phd for their suggestions):

prune __pycache__
prune */__pycache__ 
recursive-exclude */__pycache__ *

Answer 1

prune __pycache__

prunes only top-level __pycache__. To prune __pycache__ anywhere in the directory hierarchy use

prune */__pycache__ 

Answer 2

The goal of this post was to include any __pycache__ directories from the pip package. This is not really possible because each __init__.py creates a __pycache__ directory after the manifest is created.

For anyone looking for an answer on how to exclude folders when building a wheel using MANIFEST.in, both suggestions posted by phd are working:

prune */__pycache__ 
recursive-exclude */__pycache__ *