Distutils

Distutils is the standard mechanism to distribute Python packages and extensions since Python 1.6.

Current status

To implement new features and clean up the code without breaking third-party tools that rely on undocumented internals, distutils has been forked under the name distutils2 and developed outside of Python’s standard library, until it was complete enough to be merged back. In Python 3.3, distutils2 has been reintegrated, under the name packaging.

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

• Distutils/DiscussionOverview

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

Current work

• Distutils/Terminology: New terminology

• 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.

History

Distutils module was included in standard distribution in Python 1.6. It was back in year 2000. Before that Distutils was available in Python 1.5.2 as a separate download. Since then Distutils expanded with new commands, but after almost 10 years basic principles stays the same - there is central setup.py file, which everybody can add its own code to. There is configuration setup.cfg where you can set default options for supported Distutils commands. The flexibility that Distutils architecture promotes, the lack of conventions and API that enforces them resulted in that there still no way to uninstall or list installed packages/modules, no way to query their versions either. Absence of clear border between Distutils and custom code places additional burden on newcomers in Distutils packaging that prefer to learn by example from some other existing configuration.

Misc.

Distutils/DistributeSprint : Sprint ideas

/Proposals

#distutils - irc channel for Distutils