The root directory of a package that has to be distributed contains a setup.py script. It defines all metadata as described in the distutils module. Package metadata is expressed as arguments in a call to the standard setup() function. Despite distutils being the standard library module provided for the purpose of code packaging, it is actually recommended to use the setuptools instead. The setuptools package provides several enhancements over the standard distutils module.
Therefore, the minimum content for this file is as follows:
from setuptools import setup
setup(
name='mypackage',
)
name gives the full name of the package. From there, the script provides several commands that can be listed with the --help-commands option, as shown in the following code:
$ python3 setup.py --help-commands
Standard commands:
build build everything needed to install
clean clean up temporary files from 'build' command
install install everything from build directory
sdist create a source distribution (tarball, zip file, etc.)
register register the distribution with the Python package index
bdist create a built (binary) distribution
check perform some checks on the package
upload upload binary package to PyPI
Extra commands:
bdist_wheel create a wheel distribution
alias define a shortcut to invoke one or more commands
develop install package in 'development mode'
usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
or: setup.py --help-commands
or: setup.py cmd --help
The actual list of commands is longer and can vary depending on the available setuptools extensions. It was truncated to show only those that are most important and relevant to this chapter. Standard commands are the built-in commands provided by distutils, whereas extra commands are the ones provided by third-party packages, such as setuptools or any other package that defines and registers a new command. Here, one such extra command registered by another package is bdist_wheel, provided by the wheel package.