Distribute executable module

Question

I developed a program consisting of a package which is executable (i.e. two files x/__init__.py and x/__main__.py), so I can execute it using python -m x, if the package resides in the python path.

I never tried to distribute Python packages/modules and I don't have any experience in that field (yet)... I already noticed that there are many different systems and now I have three questions:

Which system is appropiate for a Python 3(.2) program? distribute? distutils? setuptools?
How can I add kind of a "wrapper script" to the distribution that executes the module directly without the hassle with python -m … so that the user can just type x (of course the actual name is a bit more unique :) on the shell.
How can I do 2. in a platfom-independent way?

Thanks! :)

Martijn Pieters · Accepted Answer · 2012-11-14 13:21:03Z

Use either distribute or setuptools, the former is a fork of the latter, with some improvements and better documentation. Either one is a big step up from distutils, which is part of the python standard library.
You want a console script, for which you define an entry point:
```
entry_points = {
    'console_scripts': [
        'foo = my_package.some_module:main_func',
        'bar = other_module:some_func',
    ],
```
where foo and bar would be scripts that you can call on the command line. The indicated function will be called with sys.argv[1:] as the first and only argument.
Let the installation tools take care of that; it works fine on Windows. :-)

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