Making an installable Python Package

Full example can be found here: https://github.com/AntheaJFW/setuptools-example

We will want to start with a fresh installation of python to test whether the module works from a fresh install. Hence, create and activate virtual environment with python3:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

For this example, we’re using the following CLI example, Order Pizza, which will require pyinquirer:

pip install pyinquirer

Install Setup tools, as we will need this to make this into a pip install-able package:

pip install --upgrade setuptools

Creating module to import:

Create a file order like so:

order_pizza/
    order_pizza/
        __init__.py
        order_pizza.py
    setup.py

Where order_pizza.py will have the function OrderPizza to be used to run the cli app, and __init__.py will only contain the following:

from .order_pizza import OrderPizza

Hence when order_pizza is imported, OrderPizza is in the module namespace.

This means, if we import order_pizza, we can now also allow calling OrderPizza() using the following:

import order_pizza
order_pizza.OrderPizza()

We can test the setup by starting python in the second level ie

order_pizza/
->   order_pizza/
        __init__.py
        order_pizza.py
    setup.py

Starting python repl:

cd order_pizza
python

And trying to import and run the module with either of the following:

from order_pizza import OrderPizza
OrderPizza()

import order_pizza
order_pizza.OrderPizza()

In setup.py, we can specify the modules that this module will depend on, by specifying these in install_requires. In this case, as our module only has one external dependency, pyInquirer, we can specify this here:

from setuptools import setup

setup(name='OrderPizza',
      version='0.1',
      description='OrderPizza',
      url='',
      author='',
      author_email='',
      license='MIT',
      packages=['order_pizza'],
      zip_safe=False,
      install_requires=[
          'pyInquirer',
      ])

Check that it works using:

python setup.py develop

Sucess would output a message similar to the following will prompt:

Finished processing dependencies for OrderPizza==0.1

Then you may install the module using

pip install .

Test that it works by changing your terminal directory to elsewhere and running python, ie:

cd ~
python

Then import your new module!:

from order_pizza import OrderPizza
OrderPizza()

Congrats! Enjoy the packaged pizza!