Configuring setuptools using pyproject.toml files

Note

New in 61.0.0

Important

For the time being [1], pip still might require a setup.py file to support editable installs [2].

A simple script will suffice, for example:

from setuptools import setup

setup()

Starting with PEP 621, the Python community selected pyproject.toml as a standard way of specifying project metadata. Setuptools has adopted this standard and will use the information contained in this file as an input in the build process.

The example below illustrates how to write a pyproject.toml file that can be used with setuptools. It contains two TOML tables (identified by the [table-header] syntax): build-system and project. The build-system table is used to tell the build frontend (e.g. build or pip) to use setuptools and any other plugins (e.g. setuptools-scm) to build the package. The project table contains metadata fields as described by PyPUG:specifications/declaring-project-metadata guide.

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools", "setuptools-scm"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

[project]
name = "my_package"
description = "My package description"
readme = "README.rst"
requires-python = ">=3.7"
keywords = ["one", "two"]
license = {text = "BSD 3-Clause License"}
classifiers = [
    "Framework :: Django",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
]
dependencies = [
    "requests",
    'importlib-metadata; python_version<"3.8"',
]
dynamic = ["version"]

[project.optional-dependencies]
pdf = ["ReportLab>=1.2", "RXP"]
rest = ["docutils>=0.3", "pack ==1.1, ==1.3"]

[project.scripts]
my-script = "my_package.module:function"

# ... other project metadata fields as specified in:
#     https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/specifications/declaring-project-metadata/

Setuptools-specific configuration

Warning

Support for declaring configurations not standardized by PEP 621 (i.e. the [tool.setuptools] table), is still in beta stage and might change in future releases.

While the standard project table in the pyproject.toml file covers most of the metadata used during the packaging process, there are still some setuptools-specific configurations that can be set by users that require customization. These configurations are completely optional and probably can be skipped when creating simple packages. They are equivalent to the Keywords used by the setup.py file, and can be set via the tool.setuptools table:

Key	Value Type (TOML)	Notes
platforms	array
zip-safe	boolean	If not specified, setuptools will try to guess a reasonable default for the package
eager-resources	array
py-modules	array	See tip below
packages	array or find directive	See tip below
package-dir	table/inline-table	Used when explicitly listing packages
namespace-packages	array	Deprecated - Use implicit namespaces instead (PEP 420)
package-data	table/inline-table	See Data Files Support
include-package-data	boolean	True by default
exclude-package-data	table/inline-table
license-files	array of glob patterns	Provisional - likely to change with PEP 639 (by default: ['LICEN[CS]E*', 'COPYING*', 'NOTICE*', 'AUTHORS*'])
data-files	table/inline-table	Discouraged - check Data Files Support
script-files	array	Deprecated - equivalent to the script keyword in setup.py (should be avoided in favour of project.scripts)
provides	array	Ignored by pip
obsoletes	array	Ignored by pip

Note

The TOML value types array and table/inline-table are roughly equivalent to the Python’s dict and list data types.

Please note that some of these configurations are deprecated or at least discouraged, but they are made available to ensure portability. New packages should avoid relying on deprecated/discouraged fields, and existing packages should consider alternatives.

Tip

When both py-modules and packages are left unspecified, setuptools will attempt to perform Automatic discovery, which should cover most popular project directory organization techniques, such as the src-layout and the flat-layout.

However if your project does not follow these conventional layouts (e.g. you want to use a flat-layout but at the same time have custom directories at the root of your project), you might need to use the find directive [4] as shown below:

[tool.setuptools.packages.find]
where = ["src"]  # list of folders that contain the packages (["."] by default)
include = ["my_package*"]  # package names should match these glob patterns (["*"] by default)
exclude = ["my_package.tests*"]  # exclude packages matching these glob patterns (empty by default)
namespaces = false  # to disable scanning PEP 420 namespaces (true by default)

Note that the glob patterns in the example above need to be matched by the entire package name. This means that if you specify exclude = ["tests"], modules like tests.my_package.test1 will still be included in the distribution (to remove them, add a wildcard to the end of the pattern: "tests*").

Alternatively, you can explicitly list the packages in modules:

[tool.setuptools]
packages = ["my_package"]

Dynamic Metadata

Note that in the first example of this page we use dynamic to identify which metadata fields are dynamically computed during the build by either setuptools itself or the plugins installed via build-system.requires (e.g. setuptools-scm is capable of deriving the current project version directly from the git version control system).

Currently the following fields can be listed as dynamic: version, classifiers, description, entry-points, scripts, gui-scripts and readme. When these fields are expected to be provided by setuptools a corresponding entry is required in the tool.setuptools.dynamic table [3]. For example:

# ...
[project]
name = "my_package"
dynamic = ["version", "readme"]
# ...
[tool.setuptools.dynamic]
version = {attr = "my_package.VERSION"}
readme = {file = ["README.rst", "USAGE.rst"]}

In the dynamic table, the attr directive [4] will read an attribute from the given module [5], while file will read the contents of all given files and concatenate them in a single string.

Key	Directive	Notes
version	attr, file
readme	file
description	file	One-line text
classifiers	file	Multi-line text with one classifier per line
entry-points	file	INI format following Entry points specification (console_scripts and gui_scripts can be included)
dependencies	file	requirements.txt format (# comments and blank lines excluded) BETA
optional-dependencies	file	requirements.txt format per group (# comments and blank lines excluded) BETA

Supporting file for dependencies is meant for a convenience for packaging applications with possibly strictly versioned dependencies.

Library packagers are discouraged from using overly strict (or “locked”) dependency versions in their dependencies and optional-dependencies.

Currently, when specifying optional-dependencies dynamically, all of the groups must be specified dynamically; one can not specify some of them statically and some of them dynamically.

Also note that the file format for specifying dependencies resembles a requirements.txt file, however please keep in mind that all non-comment lines must conform with PEP 508 (pip-specify syntaxes, e.g. -c/-r/-e flags, are not supported).

---

Notes

[1]

Editable install without setup.py will be supported in future versions of setuptools. Check https://github.com/pypa/setuptools/issues/2816 for detail.

[2]

pip may allow editable install only with pyproject.toml and setup.cfg. However, this behavior may not be consistent over various build tools. Having a setup.py is still recommended if you rely on one of these tools.

[3]

Dynamic scripts and gui-scripts are a special case. When resolving these metadata keys, setuptools will look for tool.setuptool.dynamic.entry-points, and use the values of the console_scripts and gui_scripts entry-point groups.

[4] (1,2)

In the context of this document, directives are special TOML values that are interpreted differently by setuptools (usually triggering an associated function). Most of the times they correspond to a special TOML table (or inline-table) with a single top-level key. For example, you can have the {find = {where = ["src"], exclude=["tests*"]}} directive for tool.setuptools.packages, or {attr = "mymodule.attr"} directive for tool.setuptools.dynamic.version.

[5]

attr is meant to be used when the module attribute is statically specified (e.g. as a string, list or tuple). As a rule of thumb, the attribute should be able to be parsed with ast.literal_eval(), and should not be modified or re-assigned.