Python packages

• the most common distribution tool as of 2021-07-17 is setuptools which uses setup.py which is a script telling how to build the Python module; it is documented from the official documentation

• some projects replaces the setup.py with pyproject.toml which solves the dependency problem; it is specified from PEP-0518

• some projects replaced the official Python package manager (pip) with poetry which requires a new setup; it can use pyproject.toml which makes it easy to install with either the official setup or Poetry; projects may have a poetry.toml to configure the module similarly to package.json in NodeJS packages; Poetry packages may also has a lockfile at poetry.lock

• examples:

  • the source of Poetry itself uses the Poetry package manager

  • Cookiecutter (at commit d6037b7dee5756e35a6ecd5b522899a9061c2c79) uses pyproject.toml with a shim for the setuptools

  • Cruft uses Poetry (which in turn can use the official distribution setup)

  • rmfuse uses pyproject.toml that can be installed either with Pip or Poetry