3.1 Distributing your extension modules

When an extension has been successfully build, there are three ways to use it.

End-users will typically want to install the module, they do so by running

python setup.py install

Module maintainers should produce source packages; to do so, they run

python setup.py sdist

In some cases, additional files need to be included in a source distribution; this is done through a MANIFEST.in file; see the distutils documentation for details.

If the source distribution has been build successfully, maintainers can also create binary distributions. Depending on the platform, one of the following commands can be used to do so.

python setup.py bdist_wininst
python setup.py bdist_rpm
python setup.py bdist_dumb
See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.