You can install the latest version of setuptools
using pip
:
pip install --upgrade setuptools
Most of the times, however, you don't have to...
Instead, when creating new Python packages, it is recommended to use a command line tool called build
. This tool will automatically download setuptools
and any other build-time dependencies that your project might have. You just need to specify them in a pyproject.toml
file at the root of your package, as indicated in the following section <basic-use>
.
You can also install build <build:installation>
using pip
:
pip install --upgrade build
This will allow you to run the command: python -m build
.
Important
Please note that some operating systems might be equipped with the python3
and pip3
commands instead of python
and pip
(but they should be equivalent). If you don't have pip
or pip3
available in your system, please check out pip installation docs <pip:installation>
.
Every python package must provide a pyproject.toml
and specify the backend (build system) it wants to use. The distribution can then be generated with whatever tool that provides a build sdist
-like functionality.
When creating a Python package, you must provide a pyproject.toml
file containing a build-system
section similar to the example below:
[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"
This section declares what are your build system dependencies, and which library will be used to actually do the packaging.
In addition to specifying a build system, you also will need to add some package information such as metadata, contents, dependencies, etc. This can be done in the same pyproject.toml
1 file, or in a separated one: setup.cfg
or setup.py
2.
The following example demonstrates a minimum configuration (which assumes the project depends on requests
and importlib-metadata
to be able to run):
pyproject.toml
[project]
name = "mypackage"
version = "0.0.1"
dependencies = [
"requests",
'importlib-metadata; python_version<"3.8"',
]
See /userguide/pyproject_config
for more information.
setup.cfg
[metadata]
name = mypackage
version = 0.0.1
[options]
install_requires =
requests
importlib-metadata; python_version < "3.8"
See /userguide/declarative_config
for more information.
setup.py3
from setuptools import setup
setup(
name='mypackage',
version='0.0.1',
install_requires=[
'requests',
'importlib-metadata; python_version == "3.8"',
],
)
See /references/keywords
for more information.
Finally, you will need to organize your Python code to make it ready for distributing into something that looks like the following (optional files marked with #
):
mypackage
├── pyproject.toml # and/or setup.cfg/setup.py (depending on the configuration method)
| # README.rst or README.md (a nice description of your package)
| # LICENCE (properly chosen license information, e.g. MIT, BSD-3, GPL-3, MPL-2, etc...)
└── mypackage
├── __init__.py
└── ... (other Python files)
With build installed in your system <install-build>
, you can then run:
python -m build
You now have your distribution ready (e.g. a tar.gz
file and a .whl
file in the dist
directory), which you can upload <twine:index>
to PyPI!
Of course, before you release your project to PyPI, you'll want to add a bit more information to help people find or learn about your project. And maybe your project will have grown by then to include a few dependencies, and perhaps some data files and scripts. In the next few sections, we will walk through the additional but essential information you need to specify to properly package your project.
Setuptools offers first class support for
setup.py
files as a configuration mechanism.It is important to remember, however, that running this file as a script (e.g.
python setup.py sdist
) is strongly discouraged, and that the majority of the command line interfaces are (or will be) deprecated (e.g.python setup.py install
,python setup.py bdist_wininst
, ...).We also recommend users to expose as much as possible configuration in a more declarative way via the
pyproject.toml <pyproject_config>
orsetup.cfg <declarative_config>
, and keep thesetup.py
minimal with only the dynamic parts (or even omit it completely if applicable).See Why you shouldn't invoke setup.py directly for more background.
For projects that follow a simple directory structure, setuptools
should be able to automatically detect all packages <package>
and namespaces <namespace>
. However, complex projects might include additional folders and supporting files that not necessarily should be distributed (or that can confuse setuptools
auto discovery algorithm).
Therefore, setuptools
provides a convenient way to customize which packages should be distributed and in which directory they should be found, as shown in the example below:
pyproject.toml (BETA)4
# ...
[tool.setuptools.packages]
find = {} # Scan the project directory with the default parameters
# OR
[tool.setuptools.packages.find]
# All the following settings are optional:
where = ["src"] # ["."] by default
include = ["mypackage*"] # ["*"] by default
exclude = ["mypackage.tests*"] # empty by default
namespaces = false # true by default
setup.cfg
[options]
packages = find: # OR `find_namespace:` if you want to use namespaces
[options.packages.find] # (always `find` even if `find_namespace:` was used before)
# This section is optional as well as each of the following options:
where=src # . by default
include=mypackage* # * by default
exclude=mypackage.tests* # empty by default
setup.py5
from setuptools import find_packages # or find_namespace_packages
setup(
# ...
packages=find_packages(
# All keyword arguments below are optional:
where='src', # '.' by default
include=['mypackage*'], # ['*'] by default
exclude=['mypackage.tests'], # empty by default
),
# ...
)
When you pass the above information, alongside other necessary information, setuptools
walks through the directory specified in where
(defaults to .
) and filters the packages it can find following the include
patterns (defaults to *
), then it removes those that match the exclude
patterns (defaults to empty) and returns a list of Python packages.
For more details and advanced use, go to package_discovery
.
Tip
Starting with version 61.0.0, setuptools' automatic discovery capabilities have been improved to detect popular project layouts (such as the flat-layout
and src-layout
) without requiring any special configuration. Check out our reference docs <package_discovery>
for more information, but please keep in mind that this functionality is still considered beta and might change in future releases.
Setuptools supports automatic creation of scripts upon installation, that run code within your package if you specify them as entry points
<PyPUG:specifications/entry-points>
. An example of how this feature can be used in pip
: it allows you to run commands like pip install
instead of having to type python -m pip install
.
The following configuration examples show how to accomplish this:
pyproject.toml
[project.scripts]
cli-name = "mypkg.mymodule:some_func"
setup.cfg
[options.entry_points]
console_scripts =
cli-name = mypkg.mymodule:some_func
setup.py6
setup(
# ...
entry_points={
'console_scripts': [
'cli-name = mypkg.mymodule:some_func',
]
}
)
When this project is installed, a cli-name
executable will be created. cli-name
will invoke the function some_func
in the mypkg/mymodule.py
file when called by the user. Note that you can also use the entry-points
mechanism to advertise components between installed packages and implement plugin systems. For detailed usage, go to entry_point
.
Packages built with setuptools
can specify dependencies to be automatically installed when the package itself is installed. The example below shows how to configure this kind of dependencies:
pyproject.toml
[project]
# ...
dependencies = [
"docutils",
"requests <= 0.4",
]
# ...
setup.cfg
[options]
install_requires =
docutils
requests <= 0.4
setup.py7
setup(
# ...
install_requires=["docutils", "requests <= 0.4"],
# ...
)
Each dependency is represented by a string that can optionally contain version requirements (e.g. one of the operators <, >, <=, >=, == or !=, followed by a version identifier), and/or conditional environment markers, e.g. sys_platform == "win32"
(see PyPUG:specifications/version-specifiers
for more information).
When your project is installed, all of the dependencies not already installed will be located (via PyPI), downloaded, built (if necessary), and installed. This, of course, is a simplified scenario. You can also specify groups of extra dependencies that are not strictly required by your package to work, but that will provide additional functionalities. For more advanced use, see dependency_management
.
Setuptools offers three ways to specify data files to be included in your packages. For the simplest use, you can simply use the include_package_data
keyword:
pyproject.toml (BETA)8
[tool.setuptools]
include-package-data = true
# This is already the default behaviour if your are using
# pyproject.toml to configure your build.
# You can deactivate that with `include-package-data = false`
setup.cfg
[options]
include_package_data = True
setup.py9
setup(
# ...
include_package_data=True,
# ...
)
This tells setuptools to install any data files it finds in your packages. The data files must be specified via the MANIFEST.in
_ file or automatically added by a Revision Control System plugin
<Adding Support for Revision Control Systems>
. For more details, see datafiles
.
setuptools
allows you to install a package without copying any files to your interpreter directory (e.g. the site-packages
directory). This allows you to modify your source code and have the changes take effect without you having to rebuild and reinstall. Here's how to do it:
pip install --editable .
See development_mode
for more information.
Tip
Prior to pip v21.1 <pip:v21-1>
, a setup.py
script was required to be compatible with development mode. With late versions of pip, projects without setup.py
may be installed in this mode.
If you have a version of pip
older than v21.1 or is using a different packaging-related tool that does not support 660
, you might need to keep a setup.py
file in file in your repository if you want to use editable installs.
A simple script will suffice, for example:
from setuptools import setup
setup()
You can still keep all the configuration in pyproject.toml </userguide/pyproject_config>
and/or setup.cfg </userguide/declarative_config>
After generating the distribution files, the next step would be to upload your distribution so others can use it. This functionality is provided by twine
and is documented in the Python packaging tutorial
<PyPUG:tutorials/packaging-projects>
.
To avoid executing arbitrary scripts and boilerplate code, we are transitioning into a full-fledged setup.cfg
to declare your package information instead of running setup()
. This inevitably brings challenges due to a different syntax. Here </userguide/declarative_config>
we provide a quick guide to understanding how setup.cfg
is parsed by setuptools
to ease the pain of transition.
Packaging in Python can be hard and is constantly evolving. Python Packaging User Guide has tutorials and up-to-date references that can help you when it is time to distribute your work.
Notes
Support for adding build configuration options via the
[tool.setuptools]
table in thepyproject.toml
file is still in beta stage. See/userguide/pyproject_config
.↩New projects are advised to avoid
setup.py
configurations (beyond the minimal stub) when custom scripting during the build is not necessary. Examples are kept in this document to help people interested in maintaining or contributing to existing packages that usesetup.py
. Note that you can still keep most of configuration declarative insetup.cfg <declarative_config>
orpyproject.toml <pyproject_config>
and usesetup.py
only for the parts not supported in those files (e.g. C extensions). Seenote <setuppy_discouraged>
.↩New projects are advised to avoid
setup.py
configurations (beyond the minimal stub) when custom scripting during the build is not necessary. Examples are kept in this document to help people interested in maintaining or contributing to existing packages that usesetup.py
. Note that you can still keep most of configuration declarative insetup.cfg <declarative_config>
orpyproject.toml <pyproject_config>
and usesetup.py
only for the parts not supported in those files (e.g. C extensions). Seenote <setuppy_discouraged>
.↩Support for adding build configuration options via the
[tool.setuptools]
table in thepyproject.toml
file is still in beta stage. See/userguide/pyproject_config
.↩New projects are advised to avoid
setup.py
configurations (beyond the minimal stub) when custom scripting during the build is not necessary. Examples are kept in this document to help people interested in maintaining or contributing to existing packages that usesetup.py
. Note that you can still keep most of configuration declarative insetup.cfg <declarative_config>
orpyproject.toml <pyproject_config>
and usesetup.py
only for the parts not supported in those files (e.g. C extensions). Seenote <setuppy_discouraged>
.↩New projects are advised to avoid
setup.py
configurations (beyond the minimal stub) when custom scripting during the build is not necessary. Examples are kept in this document to help people interested in maintaining or contributing to existing packages that usesetup.py
. Note that you can still keep most of configuration declarative insetup.cfg <declarative_config>
orpyproject.toml <pyproject_config>
and usesetup.py
only for the parts not supported in those files (e.g. C extensions). Seenote <setuppy_discouraged>
.↩New projects are advised to avoid
setup.py
configurations (beyond the minimal stub) when custom scripting during the build is not necessary. Examples are kept in this document to help people interested in maintaining or contributing to existing packages that usesetup.py
. Note that you can still keep most of configuration declarative insetup.cfg <declarative_config>
orpyproject.toml <pyproject_config>
and usesetup.py
only for the parts not supported in those files (e.g. C extensions). Seenote <setuppy_discouraged>
.↩Support for adding build configuration options via the
[tool.setuptools]
table in thepyproject.toml
file is still in beta stage. See/userguide/pyproject_config
.↩New projects are advised to avoid
setup.py
configurations (beyond the minimal stub) when custom scripting during the build is not necessary. Examples are kept in this document to help people interested in maintaining or contributing to existing packages that usesetup.py
. Note that you can still keep most of configuration declarative insetup.cfg <declarative_config>
orpyproject.toml <pyproject_config>
and usesetup.py
only for the parts not supported in those files (e.g. C extensions). Seenote <setuppy_discouraged>
.↩