Book Image

Mastering Python

By : Rick van Hattem
Book Image

Mastering Python

By: Rick van Hattem

Overview of this book

Python is a dynamic programming language. It is known for its high readability and hence it is often the first language learned by new programmers. Python being multi-paradigm, it can be used to achieve the same thing in different ways and it is compatible across different platforms. Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient, easy to maintain, and reuse is not so straightforward. This book is an authoritative guide that will help you learn new advanced methods in a clear and contextualised way. It starts off by creating a project-specific environment using venv, introducing you to different Pythonic syntax and common pitfalls before moving on to cover the functional features in Python. It covers how to create different decorators, generators, and metaclasses. It also introduces you to functools.wraps and coroutines and how they work. Later on you will learn to use asyncio module for asynchronous clients and servers. You will also get familiar with different testing systems such as py.test, doctest, and unittest, and debugging tools such as Python debugger and faulthandler. You will learn to optimize application performance so that it works efficiently across multiple machines and Python versions. Finally, it will teach you how to access C functions with a simple Python call. By the end of the book, you will be able to write more advanced scripts and take on bigger challenges.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
6
Generators and Coroutines – Infinity, One Step at a Time
Index

Chapter 15. Packaging – Creating Your Own Libraries or Applications

The chapters thus far have covered how to write, test and, debug the Python code. With all of that, there is only one thing that remains, that is packaging and distributing your Python libraries /and applications. To create installable packages we will use the setuptools package which is bundled with Python these days. If you have created packages before, you might remember distribute and distutils2, but it is very important to remember that these have all been replaced by setuptools and distutils and you shouldn't use them anymore!

What types of program can we package with setuptools? We will show you several cases:

  • Regular packages

  • Packages with data

  • Installing executables and custom setuptools commands

  • Running tests on the package

  • Packages containing C/C++ extensions