distributing.rst

Distributing Your Application

Once your application works properly, you can create a :term:`distribution` from it by using the setup.py sdist command. The following commands assume your current working directory contains the tutorial package and the setup.py file.

On Unix:

$VENV/bin/python setup.py sdist

On Windows:

%VENV%\Scripts\python setup.py sdist

The output of such a command will be something like:

running sdist
# more output
creating dist
Creating tar archive
removing 'tutorial-0.0' (and everything under it)

This command creates a subdirectory named dist. Inside that is a tarball named tutorial-0.0.tar.gz, which is the :term:`distribution` of your application. You can send this file to your friends to show them your cool new application. They should be able to install it by pointing the pip install command directly at it. Or you can upload it to PyPI and share it with the rest of the world, where it can be downloaded via pip install remotely like any other package people download from PyPI.