Skip to main content

Packaging and Distributing Python Code

In this tutorial, we will discuss how to package and distribute Python code. This is an important aspect of Python programming as it allows you to share your code with others. By packaging your code, you can ensure others can use and install your software without knowing the details of how to build and install it from source code.

Why Package Python Code?​

Packaging your Python code makes it easy to distribute and share with others. This is particularly useful if you're developing libraries or modules that you want to share with the developer community. By packaging your code, you ensure that it can be easily installed and run on different systems without the user having to understand how to compile and install it from source code.

Basics of Python Packaging​

Python code is typically packaged into a distribution using the Distutils package that comes with Python. A distribution contains all the code needed to install and run a package. To create a distribution, you need to:

  1. Write a setup script (setup.py) - This is a Python file that configures your package. It includes information like the name of the package, version, and a list of modules and packages to include.

  2. Create a source distribution - This is a file that includes your setup script and the Python source files for your package. It's created using the sdist command to Distutils, like this: python setup.py sdist.

Here is an example of a simple setup script:

from distutils.core import setup

setup(
    name='MyPackage',
    version='0.1dev',
    packages=['mypackage',],
    license='MIT',
    long_description=open('README.txt').read(),
)

In this example, the name is the name of your package, version is the package version, packages is a list of all Python import packages that should be included in the distribution package, license is the license for your package, and long_description is a longer description of the package that will appear on the package index.

Distributing Your Package​

Once you've created a source distribution, you can distribute your package. The most common way to distribute Python packages is through the Python Package Index (PyPI). PyPI is a repository of software for the Python programming language. To distribute your package through PyPI, you'll need to:

  1. Register an account on PyPI.

  2. Install the twine package. Twine is a utility for publishing Python packages on PyPI.

  3. Upload your distribution to PyPI using twine. The command looks like this: twine upload dist/*.

Once your package is on PyPI, anyone can install it using pip, like this: pip install MyPackage.

Conclusion​

Packaging and distributing Python code allows you to share your code with others. In this tutorial, we've covered the basics of how to create a distribution for your code and how to distribute it through PyPI. There's a lot more to packaging and distribution, like managing dependencies, including data files in your package, and providing executable scripts, but this tutorial should give you a good start. Happy coding!