Hello,
I have been doing some research on this topic, but I think that it is fair to say that the available documentation about how to compile and distribute python extensions (as in Python modules written in a compile language using the CPython C-API) is not in the best shape. It seem that there have been some relatively recent activity in this area and I have the impression that this has still not been found its way in the documentation (or, if it did, I must have overlooked it).
setuptools
and “standard” setup.py
driven build using ext_modules
work fine for “easy” cases, however, I am working on a project that aims at distributing python extensions written in C++ with non trivial dependencies. I started to experiment with Meson (and its python
module) to build the project and it works very nicely. However, I am a bit lost when it comes to distribute the package in source form and in wheel binary form: integrating any alternative build tool into setuptools
seems not easy to do and impossible to maintain.
I have found mesonpep517
and while I haven’t tried it yet, I am still putting the pieces together, it seems to do exactly what I would like. However, I don’t understand how the development workflow is supposed to look like in this case, namely: what does replace the old python setup.py develop
?
Am I looking at the right tools? Is PEP-517 intended to support also a development workflow? More generally, is there a document where I can learn about the large picture about Python packaging future?
Thank you!
Cheers,
Dan