The Many Possible Futures of Python Packaging

Distutils is not the be-all and end-all of Python packaging, but as of this writing (August 2009), it’s the only packaging framework that works in Python 3. There are a number of other frameworks for Python 2; some focus on installation, others on testing and deployment. Some or all of these may end up being ported to Python 3 in the future.

These frameworks focus on installation:

• Setuptools
• Pip
• Distribute

These focus on testing and deployment:

• virtualenv
• zc.buildout
• Paver
• Fabric
• py2exe