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2. Writing the Setup Script

The setup script is the centre of all activity in building, distributing, and installing modules
using the Distutils. The main purpose of the setup script is to describe your module
distribution to the Distutils, so that the various commands that operate on your modules do
the right thing. As we saw in section A Simple Example above, the setup script consists
mainly of a call to setup() , and most information supplied to the Distutils by the module
developer is supplied as keyword arguments to setup() .

Here’s a slightly more involved example, which we’ll follow for the next couple of sections: the
Distutils’ own setup script. (Keep in mind that although the Distutils are included with Python
1.6 and later, they also have an independent existence so that Python 1.5.2 users can use
them to install other module distributions. The Distutils’ own setup script, shown here, is used
to install the package into Python 1.5.2.)

#!/usr/bin/env python

from distutils.core import setup

setup(name='Distutils',
version='1.0',
description='Python Distribution Utilities',
author='Greg Ward',
author_email='[email protected]',
url='https://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/',
packages=['distutils', 'distutils.command'],
)

There are only two differences between this and the trivial one-file distribution presented in
section A Simple Example: more metadata, and the specification of pure Python modules by
package, rather than by module. This is important since the Distutils consist of a couple of
dozen modules split into (so far) two packages; an explicit list of every module would be
tedious to generate and difficult to maintain. For more information on the additional meta-data,
see section Additional meta-data.

Note that any pathnames (files or directories) supplied in the setup script should be written
using the Unix convention, i.e. slash-separated. The Distutils will take care of converting this
platform-neutral representation into whatever is appropriate on your current platform before
actually using the pathname. This makes your setup script portable across operating systems,
which of course is one of the major goals of the Distutils. In this spirit, all pathnames in this
document are slash-separated.

This, of course, only applies to pathnames given to Distutils functions. If you, for example, use
standard Python functions such as glob.glob() or os.listdir() to specify files, you should
be careful to write portable code instead of hardcoding path separators:

glob.glob(os.path.join('mydir', 'subdir', '*.html'))

os.listdir(os.path.join('mydir', 'subdir'))

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2.1. Listing whole packages

The packages option tells the Distutils to process (build, distribute, install, etc.) all pure
Python modules found in each package mentioned in the packages list. In order to do this, of
course, there has to be a correspondence between package names and directories in the
filesystem. The default correspondence is the most obvious one, i.e. package distutils is
found in the directory distutils relative to the distribution root. Thus, when you say
packages = ['foo'] in your setup script, you are promising that the Distutils will find a file
foo/__init__.py (which might be spelled differently on your system, but you get the idea)
relative to the directory where your setup script lives. If you break this promise, the Distutils
will issue a warning but still process the broken package anyway.

If you use a different convention to lay out your source directory, that’s no problem: you just
have to supply the package_dir option to tell the Distutils about your convention. For
example, say you keep all Python source under lib , so that modules in the “root package”
(i.e., not in any package at all) are in lib , modules in the foo package are in lib/foo , and
so forth. Then you would put

package_dir = {'': 'lib'}

in your setup script. The keys to this dictionary are package names, and an empty package
name stands for the root package. The values are directory names relative to your distribution
root. In this case, when you say packages = ['foo'] , you are promising that the file
lib/foo/__init__.py exists.

Another possible convention is to put the foo package right in lib , the foo.bar package in
lib/bar , etc. This would be written in the setup script as

package_dir = {'foo': 'lib'}

A package: dir entry in the package_dir dictionary implicitly applies to all packages below
package, so the foo.bar case is automatically handled here. In this example, having
packages = ['foo', 'foo.bar'] tells the Distutils to look for lib/__init__.py and
lib/bar/__init__.py . (Keep in mind that although package_dir applies recursively, you
must explicitly list all packages in packages : the Distutils will not recursively scan your source
tree looking for any directory with an __init__.py file.)

2.2. Listing individual modules

For a small module distribution, you might prefer to list all modules rather than listing
packages—especially the case of a single module that goes in the “root package” (i.e., no
package at all). This simplest case was shown in section A Simple Example; here is a slightly
more involved example:

py_modules = ['mod1', 'pkg.mod2']

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This describes two modules, one of them in the “root” package, the other in the pkg package.
Again, the default package/directory layout implies that these two modules can be found in
mod1.py and pkg/mod2.py , and that pkg/__init__.py exists as well. And again, you can
override the package/directory correspondence using the package_dir option.

2.3. Describing extension modules

Just as writing Python extension modules is a bit more complicated than writing pure Python
modules, describing them to the Distutils is a bit more complicated. Unlike pure modules, it’s
not enough just to list modules or packages and expect the Distutils to go out and find the
right files; you have to specify the extension name, source file(s), and any compile/link
requirements (include directories, libraries to link with, etc.).

All of this is done through another keyword argument to setup() , the ext_modules option.
ext_modules is just a list of Extension instances, each of which describes a single extension
module. Suppose your distribution includes a single extension, called foo and implemented
by foo.c . If no additional instructions to the compiler/linker are needed, describing this
extension is quite simple:

Extension('foo', ['foo.c'])

The Extension class can be imported from distutils.core along with setup() . Thus, the
setup script for a module distribution that contains only this one extension and nothing else
might be:

from distutils.core import setup, Extension

setup(name='foo',
version='1.0',
ext_modules=[Extension('foo', ['foo.c'])],
)

The Extension class (actually, the underlying extension-building machinery implemented by

the build_ext command) supports a great deal of flexibility in describing Python extensions,
which is explained in the following sections.

2.3.1. Extension names and packages

The first argument to the Extension constructor is always the name of the extension,
including any package names. For example,

Extension('foo', ['src/foo1.c', 'src/foo2.c'])

describes an extension that lives in the root package, while

Extension('pkg.foo', ['src/foo1.c', 'src/foo2.c'])

describes the same extension in the pkg package. The source files and resulting object code
are identical in both cases; the only difference is where in the filesystem (and therefore where

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in Python’s namespace hierarchy) the resulting extension lives.

If you have a number of extensions all in the same package (or all under the same base
package), use the ext_package keyword argument to setup() . For example,

setup(...,
ext_package='pkg',
ext_modules=[Extension('foo', ['foo.c']),
Extension('subpkg.bar', ['bar.c'])],
)

will compile foo.c to the extension pkg.foo , and bar.c to pkg.subpkg.bar .

2.3.2. Extension source files

The second argument to the Extension constructor is a list of source files. Since the Distutils
currently only support C, C++, and Objective-C extensions, these are normally
C/C++/Objective-C source files. (Be sure to use appropriate extensions to distinguish C++
source files: .cc and .cpp seem to be recognized by both Unix and Windows compilers.)

However, you can also include SWIG interface ( .i ) files in the list; the build_ext command
knows how to deal with SWIG extensions: it will run SWIG on the interface file and compile
the resulting C/C++ file into your extension.

This warning notwithstanding, options to SWIG can be currently passed like this:

setup(...,
ext_modules=[Extension('_foo', ['foo.i'],
swig_opts=['-modern', '-I../include'])],
py_modules=['foo'],
)

Or on the commandline like this:

> python setup.py build_ext --swig-opts="-modern -I../include"

On some platforms, you can include non-source files that are processed by the compiler and
included in your extension. Currently, this just means Windows message text ( .mc ) files and
resource definition ( .rc ) files for Visual C++. These will be compiled to binary resource
( .res ) files and linked into the executable.

2.3.3. Preprocessor options

Three optional arguments to Extension will help if you need to specify include directories to
search or preprocessor macros to define/undefine: include_dirs , define_macros , and
undef_macros .

For example, if your extension requires header files in the include directory under your
distribution root, use the include_dirs option:

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Extension('foo', ['foo.c'], include_dirs=['include'])

You can specify absolute directories there; if you know that your extension will only be built on
Unix systems with X11R6 installed to /usr , you can get away with

Extension('foo', ['foo.c'], include_dirs=['/usr/include/X11'])

You should avoid this sort of non-portable usage if you plan to distribute your code: it’s
probably better to write C code like

#include <X11/Xlib.h>

If you need to include header files from some other Python extension, you can take
advantage of the fact that header files are installed in a consistent way by the Distutils
install_headers command. For example, the Numerical Python header files are installed (on
a standard Unix installation) to /usr/local/include/python1.5/Numerical . (The exact
location will differ according to your platform and Python installation.) Since the Python
include directory— /usr/local/include/python1.5 in this case—is always included in the
search path when building Python extensions, the best approach is to write C code like

#include <Numerical/arrayobject.h>

If you must put the Numerical include directory right into your header search path, though,
you can find that directory using the Distutils distutils.sysconfig module:

from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_inc

incdir = os.path.join(get_python_inc(plat_specific=1), 'Numerical')
setup(...,
Extension(..., include_dirs=[incdir]),
)

Even though this is quite portable—it will work on any Python installation, regardless of
platform—it’s probably easier to just write your C code in the sensible way.

You can define and undefine pre-processor macros with the define_macros and
undef_macros options. define_macros takes a list of (name, value) tuples, where name is
the name of the macro to define (a string) and value is its value: either a string or None .
(Defining a macro FOO to None is the equivalent of a bare #define FOO in your C source: with
most compilers, this sets FOO to the string 1 .) undef_macros is just a list of macros to
undefine.

For example:

Extension(...,
define_macros=[('NDEBUG', '1'),
('HAVE_STRFTIME', None)],
undef_macros=['HAVE_FOO', 'HAVE_BAR'])

is the equivalent of having this at the top of every C source file:

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#define NDEBUG 1
#define HAVE_STRFTIME
#undef HAVE_FOO
#undef HAVE_BAR

2.3.4. Library options

You can also specify the libraries to link against when building your extension, and the
directories to search for those libraries. The libraries option is a list of libraries to link
against, library_dirs is a list of directories to search for libraries at link-time, and
runtime_library_dirs is a list of directories to search for shared (dynamically loaded)
libraries at run-time.

For example, if you need to link against libraries known to be in the standard library search
path on target systems

Extension(...,
libraries=['gdbm', 'readline'])

If you need to link with libraries in a non-standard location, you’ll have to include the location
in library_dirs :

Extension(...,
library_dirs=['/usr/X11R6/lib'],
libraries=['X11', 'Xt'])

(Again, this sort of non-portable construct should be avoided if you intend to distribute your
code.)

2.3.5. Other options

There are still some other options which can be used to handle special cases.

The optional option is a boolean; if it is true, a build failure in the extension will not abort the
build process, but instead simply not install the failing extension.

The extra_objects option is a list of object files to be passed to the linker. These files must
not have extensions, as the default extension for the compiler is used.

extra_compile_args and extra_link_args can be used to specify additional command line

options for the respective compiler and linker command lines.

export_symbols is only useful on Windows. It can contain a list of symbols (functions or

variables) to be exported. This option is not needed when building compiled extensions:
Distutils will automatically add initmodule to the list of exported symbols.

The depends option is a list of files that the extension depends on (for example header files).
The build command will call the compiler on the sources to rebuild extension if any on this
files has been modified since the previous build.

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2.4. Relationships between Distributions and Packages

A distribution may relate to packages in three specific ways:

1. It can require packages or modules.

2. It can provide packages or modules.
3. It can obsolete packages or modules.

These relationships can be specified using keyword arguments to the

distutils.core.setup() function.

Dependencies on other Python modules and packages can be specified by supplying the
requires keyword argument to setup() . The value must be a list of strings. Each string
specifies a package that is required, and optionally what versions are sufficient.

To specify that any version of a module or package is required, the string should consist
entirely of the module or package name. Examples include 'mymodule' and
'xml.parsers.expat' .

If specific versions are required, a sequence of qualifiers can be supplied in parentheses.

Each qualifier may consist of a comparison operator and a version number. The accepted
comparison operators are:

< > ==
<= >= !=

These can be combined by using multiple qualifiers separated by commas (and optional
whitespace). In this case, all of the qualifiers must be matched; a logical AND is used to
combine the evaluations.

Let’s look at a bunch of examples:

Requires Expression Explanation

==1.0 Only version 1.0 is compatible
Any version after 1.0 and before 2.0 is compatible,
>1.0, !=1.5.1, <2.0
except 1.5.1

Now that we can specify dependencies, we also need to be able to specify what we provide
that other distributions can require. This is done using the provides keyword argument to
setup() . The value for this keyword is a list of strings, each of which names a Python module
or package, and optionally identifies the version. If the version is not specified, it is assumed
to match that of the distribution.

Some examples:

Provides Expression Explanation

mypkg Provide mypkg , using the distribution version

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Provides Expression Explanation

Provide mypkg version 1.1, regardless of the distribution
mypkg (1.1)
version

A package can declare that it obsoletes other packages using the obsoletes keyword
argument. The value for this is similar to that of the requires keyword: a list of strings giving
module or package specifiers. Each specifier consists of a module or package name
optionally followed by one or more version qualifiers. Version qualifiers are given in
parentheses after the module or package name.

The versions identified by the qualifiers are those that are obsoleted by the distribution being
described. If no qualifiers are given, all versions of the named module or package are
understood to be obsoleted.

2.5. Installing Scripts

So far we have been dealing with pure and non-pure Python modules, which are usually not
run by themselves but imported by scripts.

Scripts are files containing Python source code, intended to be started from the command
line. Scripts don’t require Distutils to do anything very complicated. The only clever feature is
that if the first line of the script starts with #! and contains the word “python”, the Distutils will
adjust the first line to refer to the current interpreter location. By default, it is replaced with the
current interpreter location. The --executable (or -e ) option will allow the interpreter path to
be explicitly overridden.

The scripts option simply is a list of files to be handled in this way. From the PyXML setup
script:

setup(...,
scripts=['scripts/xmlproc_parse', 'scripts/xmlproc_val']
)

Changed in version 3.1: All the scripts will also be added to the MANIFEST file if no template is
provided. See Specifying the files to distribute.

2.6. Installing Package Data

Often, additional files need to be installed into a package. These files are often data that’s
closely related to the package’s implementation, or text files containing documentation that
might be of interest to programmers using the package. These files are called package data.

Package data can be added to packages using the package_data keyword argument to the
setup() function. The value must be a mapping from package name to a list of relative path
names that should be copied into the package. The paths are interpreted as relative to the
directory containing the package (information from the package_dir mapping is used if

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appropriate); that is, the files are expected to be part of the package in the source directories.
They may contain glob patterns as well.

The path names may contain directory portions; any necessary directories will be created in
the installation.

For example, if a package should contain a subdirectory with several data files, the files can
be arranged like this in the source tree:

setup.py
src/
mypkg/
__init__.py
module.py
data/
tables.dat
spoons.dat
forks.dat

The corresponding call to setup() might be:

setup(...,
packages=['mypkg'],
package_dir={'mypkg': 'src/mypkg'},
package_data={'mypkg': ['data/*.dat']},
)

Changed in version 3.1: All the files that match package_data will be added to the MANIFEST
file if no template is provided. See Specifying the files to distribute.

2.7. Installing Additional Files

The data_files option can be used to specify additional files needed by the module
distribution: configuration files, message catalogs, data files, anything which doesn’t fit in the
previous categories.

data_files specifies a sequence of (directory, files) pairs in the following way:

setup(...,
data_files=[('bitmaps', ['bm/b1.gif', 'bm/b2.gif']),
('config', ['cfg/data.cfg'])],
)

Each (directory, files) pair in the sequence specifies the installation directory and the files to
install there.

Each file name in files is interpreted relative to the setup.py script at the top of the package
source distribution. Note that you can specify the directory where the data files will be
installed, but you cannot rename the data files themselves.

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The directory should be a relative path. It is interpreted relative to the installation prefix
(Python’s sys.prefix for system installations; site.USER_BASE for user installations).
Distutils allows directory to be an absolute installation path, but this is discouraged since it is
incompatible with the wheel packaging format. No directory information from files is used to
determine the final location of the installed file; only the name of the file is used.

You can specify the data_files options as a simple sequence of files without specifying a
target directory, but this is not recommended, and the install command will print a warning in
this case. To install data files directly in the target directory, an empty string should be given
as the directory.

Changed in version 3.1: All the files that match data_files will be added to the MANIFEST file
if no template is provided. See Specifying the files to distribute.

2.8. Additional meta-data

The setup script may include additional meta-data beyond the name and version. This
information includes:

Meta-Data Description Value Notes

name name of the package short string (1)
version version of this release short string (1)(2)
author package author’s name short string (3)
email address of the package
author_email email address (3)
author
maintainer package maintainer’s name short string (3)
email address of the package
maintainer_email email address (3)
maintainer
url home page for the package URL (1)
short, summary description of
description short string
the package
longer description of the
long_description long string (4)
package
location where the package
download_url URL
may be downloaded
classifiers a list of classifiers list of strings (6)(7)
platforms a list of platforms list of strings (6)(8)
keywords a list of keywords list of strings (6)(8)
license license for the package short string (5)

Notes:

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1. These fields are required.

2. It is recommended that versions take the form major.minor[.patch[.sub]].
3. Either the author or the maintainer must be identified. If maintainer is provided, distutils
lists it as the author in PKG-INFO .
4. The long_description field is used by PyPI when you publish a package, to build its
project page.
5. The license field is a text indicating the license covering the package where the license
is not a selection from the “License” Trove classifiers. See the Classifier field. Notice
that there’s a licence distribution option which is deprecated but still acts as an alias
for license .
6. This field must be a list.
7. The valid classifiers are listed on PyPI.
8. To preserve backward compatibility, this field also accepts a string. If you pass a
comma-separated string 'foo, bar' , it will be converted to ['foo', 'bar'] ,
Otherwise, it will be converted to a list of one string.

‘short string’
A single line of text, not more than 200 characters.

‘long string’
Multiple lines of plain text in reStructuredText format (see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/).

‘list of strings’
See below.

Encoding the version information is an art in itself. Python packages generally adhere to the
version format major.minor[.patch][sub]. The major number is 0 for initial, experimental
releases of software. It is incremented for releases that represent major milestones in a
package. The minor number is incremented when important new features are added to the
package. The patch number increments when bug-fix releases are made. Additional trailing
version information is sometimes used to indicate sub-releases. These are “a1,a2,…,aN” (for
alpha releases, where functionality and API may change), “b1,b2,…,bN” (for beta releases,
which only fix bugs) and “pr1,pr2,…,prN” (for final pre-release release testing). Some
examples:

0.1.0
the first, experimental release of a package

1.0.1a2
the second alpha release of the first patch version of 1.0

classifiers must be specified in a list:

setup(...,
classifiers=[
'Development Status :: 4 - Beta',
'Environment :: Console',
'Environment :: Web Environment',
'Intended Audience :: End Users/Desktop',
'Intended Audience :: Developers',
'Intended Audience :: System Administrators',
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'License :: OSI Approved :: Python Software Foundation License',

'Operating System :: MacOS :: MacOS X',
'Operating System :: Microsoft :: Windows',
'Operating System :: POSIX',
'Programming Language :: Python',
'Topic :: Communications :: Email',
'Topic :: Office/Business',
'Topic :: Software Development :: Bug Tracking',
],
)

Changed in version 3.7: setup now warns when classifiers , keywords or platforms fields
are not specified as a list or a string.

2.9. Debugging the setup script

Sometimes things go wrong, and the setup script doesn’t do what the developer wants.

Distutils catches any exceptions when running the setup script, and print a simple error
message before the script is terminated. The motivation for this behaviour is to not confuse
administrators who don’t know much about Python and are trying to install a package. If they
get a big long traceback from deep inside the guts of Distutils, they may think the package or
the Python installation is broken because they don’t read all the way down to the bottom and
see that it’s a permission problem.

On the other hand, this doesn’t help the developer to find the cause of the failure. For this
purpose, the DISTUTILS_DEBUG environment variable can be set to anything except an empty
string, and distutils will now print detailed information about what it is doing, dump the full
traceback when an exception occurs, and print the whole command line when an external
program (like a C compiler) fails.

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