What is setup.py?

Question

Can anyone please explain what setup.py is and how it can be configured or used?

Answer 1

setup.py can be used in two scenarios , First, you want to install a Python package. Second, you want to create your own Python package. Usually standard Python package has couple of important files like setup.py, setup.cfg and Manifest.in. When you are creating the Python package, these three files will determine the (content in PKG-INFO under egg-info folder) name, version, description, other required installations (usually in .txt file) and few other parameters. setup.cfg is read by setup.py while package is created (could be tar.gz ). Manifest.in is where you can define what should be included in your package. Anyways you can do bunch of stuff using setup.py like

python setup.py build
python setup.py install
python setup.py sdist  upload [-r urltorepo]  (to upload package to pypi or local repo)

There are bunch of other commands which could be used with setup.py . for help

python setup.py --help-commands