Python package setup script install binary executable

Question

I have a package awesomepkg with setup.py. I'd like to install a binary executable awesometool to the command line along with the package itself when users run pip install awesomepkg. I have compiled different OS versions for awesometool, which lives in a bin/ folder beside setup.py.

However, I can't find a good way to configure setup.py. I have attempted the following:

1. Use the scripts=[] keyword in setup(). Unfortunately, the "executable" must be a python script.

2. So I try to wrap the binary in a python script using os.system('bin/awesometool') to delegate. It also fails because the wrapper script is copied somewhere else by pip, so it doesn't know where the relative path bin/awesometool is.

3. Another potential solution is the data_files keyword. However, for some reason the data files are not copied over to site_packages installation dir, even though running python setup.py bdist_wheel says they have been copied.

Reference: https://docs.python.org/3/distutils/setupscript.html

Answer 1

I just ran into this issue myself. My solution was three-fold.

1. I added the program, e.g. awesometool, to my package structure so I could add it via the package_data keyword: package_data={'awesomepkg': ['awesometool']}. This causes it to actually be copied into the same folder as the main init.py during installation.

2. I made a python script similar to your step 2. However, instead of the relative path, I first import awesomepkg and use awesomepkg.__path__ to get the absolute path to the installation folder for the package. This would look like:

   import awesomepkg
   import subprocess as sp
   import sys
   
   path = awesomepkg.__path__[0]
   command = path + "/awesometool"
   sp.call([command] + sys.argv)
   

   I also used subprocess instead of system, but the result should be the same.

3. I added this script to the scripts keyword of setup()

Answer 2

To add on to Nick Porubsky's answer:

1. Ensure the binaries have got execute flag enabled when you commit them chmod +x
2. Ensure you have a shebang on your bash script so it knows to execute with Python

An example of this can be found here. https://github.com/HousekeepLtd/pywkher/commit/0bad81240f16479550e2b1bf2c1185a20d3cee29