Summary
In this chapter, we have discussed various ways of packaging Python libraries and applications including applications for SaaS/cloud environments as well as desktop applications. Now you should have a general idea about possible packaging tools and strategies for distributing your project. You should also know popular techniques for common problems and how to provide useful metadata to your project.
On our way, we've learned about the importance of the packaging ecosystem and details of publishing Python package distributions on package indexes. We've seen that standard distribution scripts (the setup.py files) can be useful even when not publishing code directly to PyPI.
The real fun begins when your code is made available to its users. No matter how well it is tested and how well it is designed, you will find that your application does not always behave as expected. People will report problems. You will have performance issues. Some things will inevitably...