Distutils

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.

Current status

Roadmap for Python 2.7 and Python 3.2 :

• Introduce the new version comparison algorithm in Distutils
• Standardize the .egg-info directory, provide APIs (PEP 376)
• Change PKG-INFO content (PEP 345 changes)
• Finish the massive cleanup

Still needs some discussions

• plugin systems, entry points
• static metadata
• testing infrastructure

Current work

• Distutils/VersionComparison : the goal is to come up with a version comparison system that superseds Distutils' current one

• Distutils/StandardizeEggInfo : the goal is to finalize PEP 376

• Distutils/Metadata : the goal is to finalize PEP 345

• Distutils/StaticMetadata : the goal is to come out with a proposal to split setup.py into a static metadata file + a lighter, almost empty script.

• Distutils/Friends : the goal is to try to find a project, a person or a group of person on each platform that is willing to maintain a third-party tool that build system-specific distros out of python package.

• Distutils/PluginSystem : a Plugin system to extend commands

• Distutils/TestingInfrastructure : Testing infrastructure

Learning Distutils

Documentation

• distutils — Building and installing Python modules

  • Distributing Python Modules - information for developers

  • Installing Python Modules - information for users and system administrators

• distutils SIG

• PyPI's XML-RPC interface for querying the packages database

• /Cookbook

• /FAQ

Projects

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

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

Tutorials

• /Tutorial 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 Python Package Index

• Python Package Index Tutorial by Jeremy Hylton covers the use of the distutils register command.

Misc.

/Proposals

#distutils - irc channel for Distutils