find_packages no longer follows symbolic links

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Originally reported by: jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco)

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In #184, it was reported that find_packages no longer follows symlinks, though it did in earlier versions. This should be corrected promptly.

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• Bitbucket: https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/issue/195

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Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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Restore traversal of symbolic links in find_packages. Fixes #195.

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Original comment by jaraco (Bitbucket: jaraco, GitHub: jaraco):

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Add test capturing failure when find_packages no longer follows symlinks. Ref #195

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Original comment by mgunther (Bitbucket: mgunther, GitHub: mgunther):

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Sorry to comment to such an old bug, but my issue is completely related. I would like to have a (boolean) option for find_packages, whether to follow symbolic links, or not.
I can understand that people want to create links and include them in their packages. However, usually -- in order to make my life easier -- I create soft links to my data and output directories inside the package directory. Now, when the linked directories are large (and usually mounted from other machines), buildout seems to "freeze" while using the find_packages function.

So, do you think that there is a possibility to have a boolean parameter for find_packages which allows to disable searching in these linked directories, possibly with a default value that replicated current behavior?

Manuel