What is setuptools?
The setuptools is a package that provides tools for building and distributing Python packages. It is built on top of the distutils module, which is a part of the Python standard library. setuptools provides additional functionality and features that make it easier to create and distribute Python packages.
One of the main advantages of setuptools over distutils is that it allows you to specify dependencies for your package, so that other packages that your package depends on will be automatically installed when your package is installed. This makes it easier to distribute your package, because users don’t have to manually install the dependencies before installing your package.
setuptools also provides tools for creating and managing Python virtual environments, which are isolated Python environments that allow you to have multiple versions of the same package installed on the same machine. This is useful for development and testing, because you can test your package in different environments without affecting other projects.
Example
The setup method is called in this case along with a number of arguments that give details about the package. While the description and author parameters give a brief overview of the package and the author’s name, the name and version arguments indicate the package name and version. The packages parameter defines which packages should be included in the distribution, while the author email argument provides the author’s email address. The package dependencies, or additional packages that must be installed for the my package package to function properly, are specified by the install requires parameter.
Python3
from setuptools import setupsetup( name='my_package', version='0.1', description='A sample Python package', author='John Doe', author_email='jdoe@example.com', packages=['my_package'], install_requires=[ 'numpy', 'pandas', ],) |
Differences between distribute, distutils, setuptools in Python
Overall, distutils is the original package management system for Python, and it is included in the standard library. setuptools is a third-party package that builds on top of distutils and provides additional features and functionality. distribute was a fork of setuptools that has since been merged back into setuptools, and distutils2 was a fork of distutils that was abandoned in favor of the packaging and packaging-setuptools-py2 projects.
There are several differences between distribute, distutils, and setuptools in Python.
- distribute is a fork of setuptools that was created to address some of the shortcomings of setuptools and to provide more features and better support for non-Python platforms. distribute was merged back into setuptools in 2013 and is no longer maintained as a separate project.
- distutils is the original package management system for Python, and it is included in the standard library. distutils provides basic functionality for packaging and distributing Python modules, but it does not provide many of the features and enhancements that are available in setuptools.
- setuptools is a third-party package that builds on top of distutils and provides additional features and functionality for packaging and distributing Python modules. setuptools is widely used in the Python community and is considered to be the de facto standard for packaging and distributing Python modules.