Python · Packaging & Distribution

An old tutorial tells you to build your distribution with distutils from the standard library. Why shouldn't you rely on that today?

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More in Packaging & Distribution

You import a function from a single .py file. Is that file a module, a package, or a distribution?

A teammate says "just pip install PIL" but the import is import PIL and it fails. Why can pip install <name> and import <name> use different names?

What's the practical difference between a wheel (.whl) and an sdist (source tarball, .tar.gz) when you run pip install?

Installing a package with a C extension fails with "error: command 'gcc' failed". What does that tell you about what pip downloaded, and what's the usual fix?

For a brand-new project, should you write a setup.py or a pyproject.toml? What's the relationship between them?

Why is running python setup.py install (or sdist/bdist_wheel) considered the wrong way to build/install today, and what replaced each?

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