[woodruffw]

If it's pure Python, the only packaging file you need is `pyproject.toml`. You can fill that file with packaging metadata per PEP 518 and PEP 621, including using modern build tooling like flit[1] for the build backend and build[2] for the frontend.

With that, you entire package build (for all distribution types) should be reducible to `python -m build`. Here's an example of a full project doing everything with just `pyproject.toml`[3] (FD: my project).

[1]: https://github.com/pypa/flit

[2]: https://github.com/pypa/build

[3]: https://github.com/pypa/pip-audit

[quietbritishjim]

> including using modern build tooling like flit[1] for the build backend and build[2] for the frontend.

Or you can use setuptools, which is the package that enables old setup.py builds, as the backend with pyproject.toml. This has the advantage of being mature, unlikely to be abandoned, and possibly some familiarity if you've used it before. Even then, you can use build as the front end build tool.

[woodruffw]

Yes, setuptools is also perfectly fine. It had some rough edges around PEP 621 support for a while, but those were mostly smoothed out in 2021.

(I'll note that maturity is not strong evidence here: distutils is very mature, but is in the process of being deprecated and removed from Python entirely. I don't think that's likely to happen to setuptools, but the fact that behavioral PEPs now exist for all of these tools means that the decline/abandonment of any poses much less of an ecosystem risk.)

[quietbritishjim]

I suppose I meant maturity as in: actively maintained and recommended for use for a long period, which doesn't apply to distutils.

And I should've been more upfront about the real reason for suggesting setuptools: there seem to be a number of build tools that support pyproject.toml, including flit, poetry and setuptools (and I'm sure I've seen at least one other). For me, at least, when I was making a small library recently, it was an overwhelming choice for a part of my project that feels like just admin rather than core business logic. I came close to giving up and just using setup.py with `setup()`. At least setuptools with pyproject.toml is a choice that feels safe; it may not be the best, but it will certainly be good enough that I'm unlikely to regret it later, so I didn't need to spend a lot of time looking at the detailed pros and cons of all the choices.

[woodruffw]

That's very reasonable! I don't mean to disparage that decision at all: setuptools is rock solid and a very safe choice.

[kevin_thibedeau]

Good luck finding clear documentation on how to write the pyproject file. For something that is supposed to be the way forward there hasn't been much effort to make it easy to implement.

There's also annoyances like the inability to install a script in the search path without implementing it as a module. Something setup.py doesn't require.

[akx]

The hatch project (PyPA's own tool) has a good guide. https://hatch.pypa.io/latest/config/metadata/#project-metada...

You can also use `hatch new --init` to convert a `setup.py` (whether imperative or setup.cfg-backed) to a `pyproject.toml`.

[woodruffw]

> Good luck finding clear documentation on how to write the pyproject file. For something that is supposed to be the way forward there hasn't been much effort to make it easy to implement.

PEP 621, which I mentioned, covers the format of `pyproject.toml` in detail. I also linked an example which, to the best of my knowledge, covers all current best practices for that file.

> There's also annoyances like the inability to install a script in the search path without implementing it as a module. Something setup.py doesn't require.

I'm not sure I'm following. A module in Python is just a Python file, so your script is a module. Are you saying that you can't distribute single-module packages with pyproject.toml? Because I don't think that's true.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The PEP in no way explains how to write a usable pyproject for ordinary projects. It's basically just targeted at people developing installers.

I meant package. A directory with an __init__.py. You can't install standalone script.py (or a generated wrapper) as /usr/local/bin/script with a pyproject.

[woodruffw]

> The PEP in no way explains how to write a usable pyproject for ordinary projects. It's basically just targeted at people developing installers.

Did you look at it[1]?

> I meant package. A directory with an __init__.py. You can't install standalone script.py (or a generated wrapper) as /usr/local/bin/script with a pyproject.

I still don't think I understand what your expectation is here: a `pyproject.toml` is just a metadata specification. The only difference between it and `setup.py` is that the latter is arbitrary code.

There's an old, long deprecated way to use `setup.py`, namely `setup.py install`. But that's been discouraged in favor of `pip install` for years, which behaves precisely the same way with `pyproject.toml`. If you want to install a script into `/usr/local/bin`, `pip install` with a package specified in `pyproject.toml` will work just fine.

[1]: https://peps.python.org/pep-0621/#example

[egberts1]

Not doing that either … until there are ways for only the person (me) to hold the key to the revision submission into pip.

[woodruffw]

You're confusing `pip` with PyPI. `pip` is a package installer; you can use it to install local packages, or packages that are hosted on an index. In this case, we're solely talking about local packages.

[teekert]

For me that is all handled by Poetry. I really like Poetry. But now I've been struggling (off and on) to install my private package from a private repo with PyPI dependencies for a week now...