Create different python packages from same repository

Question

I'm building a Python package from a source code repository I have, using a setup.py script with setuptools.setup(...). In this function call I include all the Python libraries needed for the project to be installed using the install_requires argument.

However, I noticed some users do not use all the sub-packages from this package, but only some specific ones, which do not need some libraries that are huge to be installed (e.g., torch).

Given this situation, can I create in the same repository something like myrepo['full'] or myrepo['little']? Do you have any document on how to do so if it's possible?

Answer 1

This is called optional dependencies and is implemented using extras_require. It's a dictionary mapping names to lists of strings specifying what other distributions must be installed to support those features. For example:

setup(
    name="MyPackage",
    ...,
    extras_require={
        'little': ['dep1', 'dep2'],
        'full': ['dep1', 'dep2', 'torch'],
    },
)

To avoid repeating lists of common dependencies:

common_deps = ['dep1', 'dep2']

setup(
    name="MyPackage",
    ...,
    extras_require={
        'little': common_deps,
        'full': common_deps + ['torch'],
    },
)

See the docs at https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/userguide/dependency_management.html#optional-dependencies. Switch the docs to setup.py in the menu.