Python module distribution installs executable to path

Question

In the past I saw Python module distributions on PyPI which installed an executable to the path when you installed them with pip, unfortunately I can't find one like this anymore.

I wonder how this is possible. Would you do this in your setup.py? Can you get this to work for multiple platforms?

A link to a module doing this would be very helpful as well.

I'm NOT talking about installing python modules to the python path but installing executables to the system path!

Answer 1

Take a look at http://python-packaging.readthedocs.org/en/latest/command-line-scripts.html

The scripts Keyword Argument

The first approach is to write your script in a separate file, such as you might write a shell script.:

funniest/
     funniest/
         __init__.py
         ...
     setup.py
     bin/
         funniest-joke

... The funniest-joke script just looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import funniest print funniest.joke()

Then we can declare the script in setup() like this:

setup(
    ...
    scripts=['bin/funniest-joke'],
    ... ) 

When we install the package, setuptools will copy the script to our PATH and make it available for general use.