Before we begin, first let us understand what these tools are and why we prefer one over another. Distutils
is a framework that comes by default with Python, and setuptools
builds over the standard Distutils
to provide enhanced functionalities and features. In a real-world scenario, you will never use Distutils
. The only case where you might want to use Distutils
alone is where setuptools
is unavailable. (A good setup script should check for the availability of setuptools
before proceeding.) In most cases, users will be better off installing setuptools
as most packages nowadays are built over them. We will be using setuptools
for building Cython code in the following chapters; hence, for our purpose, we will be installing setuptools
now and using it extensively from now on.
Next let us start by installing the required tools to build our first dummy (but working) installer. After we have got our installer working, we will dive into more functionalities...