Using setuptools

The standard library contains the distutils library, a collection of functionality related to packaging and distributing Python code. However, both the distutilsdocumentation (https://docs.python.org/3/library/distutils.html) and the official packaging guide recommend against using it and instead direct you to use setuptools.

The setuptools library is an extension of the distutils library that adds some important functionality such as dependency handling; although it is not part of the standard library, it is included in the official distributions for Windows and macOS, and is readily available from the package repositories of most Linux distributions. setuptools is used by the pip package installer, and we can use it to create packages that can be installed on any system with Python and pip.

Note

If you want to create packages that can be uploaded to PyPI, setuptools is what you need. For more information about preparing and uploading packages to PyPI, see the official Python...