setup.py and adding file to /bin/

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.

Answers:

Thank you for visiting the Q&A section on Magenaut. Please note that all the answers may not help you solve the issue immediately. So please treat them as advisements. If you found the post helpful (or not), leave a comment & I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.

Method 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)

Method 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).

Method 3

There are two ways in order to get a working command line tool from setuptools and PyPI infrastructure:

1. The “scripts” Keyword Argument

   This allows the command-line execution of everything you want, it can be a Python script, a shell script or something completely different.

2. The “console_scripts” Entry Point

   This allows Python functions (not scripts!) to be directly registered as command-line accessible tools.

Method 4

If you’re willing to build and install the entire python package, this is how I would go about it:

• Edit the setup() function in setup.py to contain a parameter named scripts and set its argument as the location of the file(s) you wish to run from anywhere. e.g.

setup(name='myproject',author='',author_email='',scripts=['bin/myscript.py'])

• Within the directory that contains setup.py, create a bin directory by typing mkdir bin
• Add myscript.py to this newly-created bin directory (and make sure it’s executable!)
• cd into the directory that contains setup.py again, and install the entire python package by typing python setup.py install
• Once the package is installed, you should be able to run myscript.py from anywhere on the system!

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0