Using setuptools to create a cython package calling an external C library

Question

I am trying to compile, install and run a package that we\'ll call myPackage. It contains a *.pyx file that calls the function fftw_set_timel

Answer 1

It turns out setuptools has a module setuptools.extension.Extension which is used in the same way as the distutils.extension.Extension module .

In the end, the setup.py file looks something like :

from setuptools import setup, find_packages
from setuptools.extension import Extension
from Cython.Build import cythonize

extensions = [
    Extension(
        "myPackage.myModule",
        ["myPackage/myModule.pyx"],
        include_dirs=['/some/path/to/include/'], # not needed for fftw unless it is installed in an unusual place
        libraries=['fftw3', 'fftw3f', 'fftw3l', 'fftw3_threads', 'fftw3f_threads', 'fftw3l_threads'],
        library_dirs=['/some/path/to/include/'], # not needed for fftw unless it is installed in an unusual place
    ),
]

setup(
    name = "myPackage",
    packages = find_packages(),
    ext_modules = cythonize(extensions)
)

Here is an overview of my installation directory :

.
├── MANIFEST.in
├── myPackage
│   └── myModule.pyx
├── README.rst
└── setup.py

where myModule.pyx is the file that calls fftw_set_timelimit().

MANIFEST.in contains :

include myPackage/*.*

and README.rst is a mere plain text file.