9. API Reference¶

9.1. distutils.core — Core Distutils functionality¶

The distutils.core module is the only module that needs to be installed to use the Distutils. It provides the setup() (which is called from the setup script). Indirectly provides the distutils.dist.Distribution and distutils.cmd.Command class.

distutils.core.setup(arguments)¶

The basic do-everything function that does most everything you could ever ask for from a Distutils method.

The setup function takes a large number of arguments. These are laid out in the following table.

argument name	value	type
name	The name of the package	a string
version	The version number of the package; see distutils.version	a string
description	A single line describing the package	a string
long_description	Longer description of the package	a string
author	The name of the package author	a string
author_email	The email address of the package author	a string
maintainer	The name of the current maintainer, if different from the author. Note that if the maintainer is provided, distutils will use it as the author in PKG-INFO	a string
maintainer_email	The email address of the current maintainer, if different from the author	a string
url	A URL for the package (homepage)	a string
download_url	A URL to download the package	a string
packages	A list of Python packages that distutils will manipulate	a list of strings
py_modules	A list of Python modules that distutils will manipulate	a list of strings
scripts	A list of standalone script files to be built and installed	a list of strings
ext_modules	A list of Python extensions to be built	a list of instances of distutils.core.Extension
classifiers	A list of categories for the package	a list of strings; valid classifiers are listed on PyPI.
distclass	the Distribution class to use	a subclass of distutils.core.Distribution
script_name	The name of the setup.py script - defaults to sys.argv[0]	a string
script_args	Arguments to supply to the setup script	a list of strings
options	default options for the setup script	a dictionary
license	The license for the package	a string
keywords	Descriptive meta-data, see PEP 314	a list of strings or a comma-separated string
platforms		a list of strings or a comma-separated string
cmdclass	A mapping of command names to Command subclasses	a dictionary
data_files	A list of data files to install	a list
package_dir	A mapping of package to directory names	a dictionary

distutils.core.run_setup(script_name[, script_args=None, stop_after='run'])¶

Run a setup script in a somewhat controlled environment, and return the distutils.dist.Distribution instance that drives things. This is useful if you need to find out the distribution meta-data (passed as keyword args from script to setup()), or the contents of the config files or command-line.

script_name is a file that will be read and run with exec(). sys.argv[0] will be replaced with script for the duration of the call. script_args is a list of strings; if supplied, sys.argv[1:] will be replaced by script_args for the duration of the call.

stop_after tells setup() when to stop processing; possible values:

value	description
init	Stop after the Distribution instance has been created and populated with the keyword arguments to setup()
config	Stop after config files have been parsed (and their data stored in the Distribution instance)
commandline	Stop after the command-line (sys.argv[1:] or script_args) have been parsed (and the data stored in the Distribution instance.)
run	Stop after all commands have been run (the same as if setup() had been called in the usual way). This is the default value.

In addition, the distutils.core module exposed a number of classes that live elsewhere.

• Extension from