setup.py and adding file to /bin/

Question

I can't figure out how to make setup.py add a scrip to the the user's /bin or /usr/bin or whatever.

E.g., I'd like to add a myscript.py to /usr/bin so that the user can call myscript.py from any directory.

Answer 1

Consider using console_scripts:

from setuptools import setup setup(name='some-name',       ...       entry_points = {               'console_scripts': [                   'command-name = package.module:main_func_name',                                 ],                         }, ) 

Where main_func_name is a main function in your main module. command-name is a name under which it will be saved in /usr/local/bin/ (usually)

Answer 2

The Python documentation explains it under the installing scripts section.

Scripts are files containing Python source code, intended to be started from the command line.

setup(...,       scripts=['scripts/xmlproc_parse', 'scripts/xmlproc_val'] ) 

As mentioned here, beside scripts, there is an entry_points mechanism, which is more cross-platform.

With entry_points you connect a command line tool name with a function of your choice, whereas scripts could point to any file (e.g. a shell script).