Links
- SO: distutils, setuptools, distutils2, distribute
- distutils2 is abandoned. distribute is obsolete.
- See also bento that is built by the scipy folks.
- Python Packaging User Guide (updated in 2014)
- distlib
Notes
- easy_install uses setuptools
- pip uses setuptools
- setuptools uses distutils
Distutils
distutils can generate a variety of OS-specific formats, including for example RPM packages for Red Hat systems or self-extracting installers for Windows
Shortcomings to distutils: - It provides no way to specify dependencies between packages. - It provides no way to emulate the experience on, for example, many Linux distributions where you type a command, feed it a package name, and the appropriate package (and dependencies) will be downloaded from a repository and installed for you.