Before we begin, first let us understand what these tools are and why we prefer one over another. Distutils is a framework that comes by default with Python, and setuptools builds over the standard Distutils to provide enhanced functionalities and features. In a real-world scenario, you will never use Distutils. The only case where you might want to use Distutils alone is where setuptools is unavailable. (A good setup script should check for the availability of setuptools before proceeding.) In most cases, users will be better off installing setuptools as most packages nowadays are built over them. We will be using setuptools for building Cython code in the following chapters; hence, for our purpose, we will be installing setuptools now and using it extensively from now on.
Next let us start by installing the required tools to build our first dummy (but working) installer. After we have got our installer working, we will dive into more functionalities...