cliquematch VS setuptools

Thank you Gregory for writing this post. There have been a bunch of announcements about "setup.py has been deprecated", but few have clearly outlined how to move away from setup.py, and more importantly, fewer have outlined what a struggle it is to move away from setup.py.

I was sad to see setuptools officially deprecated, because it looks like another way in which Python packaging is being red-taped away for a non-expert. If someone like the OP (who has 10+ years programming Python) had to do so much for what appears to be a zstd CFFI/Rust wrapper, where does that leave the rest of us?

Here's a python package of mine that uses setup.py: https://github.com/ahgamut/cliquematch/blob/master/setup.py which I have not upgraded to the new tool(s) yet. I think I will need to upgrade it soon. If anyone has suggestions for a tool that will _fully replace_ setup.py, I would like to see tutorials with the following examples:

1. How would I build a package that has pure-Python files and data files? With setuptools I would use maybe MANIFEST.in or package_dir.

2. How would I build a package that has a CPython extension accessed via cffi? (this post points to the answer)

3. How would I build a package that has a CPython extension _without_ cffi, that just wraps some small C code I wrote with CPython's API? What about an extension that uses PyBind11? What about an extension that uses Rust?

4. How would I build a package that requires a "system" package like libblas-dev? Can something like numpy be built optimally without ever writing setup.py? What would a config for that look like? Last I remember numpy used their own patch of distutils to build, I wonder what it is now.

To be fair, that seems to have been a 2 year warning:

https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/commit/3544de73b3662a27fa...

There was/is some discussion in setuptools about how to normalize the tarball (https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/2133#issuecomment-...) coudl something similar be applied to Building Python itself ?

❯ yay -Sy python-setuptools python-jaraco.text ❯ pip show setuptools Name: setuptools Version: 67.7.0 Summary: Easily download, build, install, upgrade, and uninstall Python packages Home-page: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools Author: Python Packaging Authority Author-email: [email protected] License: Location: /usr/lib/python3.11/site-packages Requires: jaraco.text, more-itertools, ordered-set, packaging, platformdirs, tomli, validate-pyproject Required-by: Cerberus, fs, httpie, input-remapper, pecan, pycountry, python-lsp-server, reuse, setuptools-scm, zc.lockfile

Link: https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/3772

For example, when it comes to Python, one option is to use the same packaging system that a huge number of open-source libraries and tools are published with. You can use setuptools or Hatch to build a "packaged" version of your code, and publish it to either the public PyPi repository or an internal one that you set up. Then your users can use pip to install your package, automatically fetch its dependencies, and keep it up to date, just like any other Python module.

You could maybe make it a click Application, and use setuptools.

Not sure how advisable it is to depend on setup.py given the setuptools team has very clearly stated that they are not interested in supporting any cli commands anymore including setup.py install. Relavant PR