"distutils" is by now the standard mechanism to distribute Python packages and extensions, and appeared in Python 1.6. It runs under 1.5.2 though, but you have to install it (once) to use it for that Python version.

Documentation:

• [http://docs.python.org/dist/dist.html Distributing Python Modules] - information for developers

• [http://docs.python.org/inst/inst.html Installing Python Modules] - information for users and system administrators

• [http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/ distutils SIG]

• [http://www.mechanicalcat.net/tech/pypi/pypi-xmlrpc.html PyPI's XML-RPC interface] for querying the packages database

Projects:

• DistutilsProjects - please add a listing to this page if you're working on Distutils (and help us reduce duplication of effort)

• DistUtilsExtensions is a repository of extensions for your "setup.py".

Tutorials:

• DistUtilsTutorial is a small tutorial to introduce the topic. It includes a complete demo, from start to finish.

• CheeseShopTutorial is a related tutorial that just covers submitting information to the [http://pypi.python.org/pypi Python Package Index]

Q. Can you use distutils (i.e., your setup.py file) to uninstall a given package?

A. Unfortunately, no. This would be a useful feature to have though... However, the KDE group has written a [http://www.simonzone.com/software/pykdeextensions/en/distutils-uninstall.html wrapper] for distutils that adds a simple uninstall command.