Options Entry_points Console_scripts
Entry Points ¶ Entry points are a type of metadata that can be exposed by packages on installation. They are a very useful feature of the Python ecosystem, and come specially handy in two scenarios: 1. The package would like to provide commands to be run at the terminal.
This functionality is known as console scripts. The docs for the (awesome) Click package suggest a few reasons to use entry points instead of scripts, including cross-platform compatibility and avoiding having the interpreter assign __name__ to __main__, which could cause code to be imported twice (if another module imports your script) Click is a nice way to implement functions for use as entry_points, btw. Entry points specification ¶ Entry points are a mechanism for an installed distribution to advertise components it provides to be discovered and used by other code.
For example: Distributions can specify console_scripts entry points, each referring to a function. When pip (or another console_scripts aware installer) installs the distribution, it will create a command. The console_scripts Entry Point ¶ The second approach is called an 'entry point'.
Setuptools allows modules to register entrypoints which other packages can hook into to provide certain functionality. It also provides a few itself, including the console_scripts entry point. The entry_points/console_scripts option is a feature provided by the setuptools package, which is commonly used for packaging and distributing Python projects.
It allows you to define command. Adding a console script entry point allows the package to define a user-friendly name for installers of the package to execute. Installers like pip will create wrapper scripts to execute a function.
In the above example, to create a command hello-world that invokes timmins.hello_world, add a console script entry point to setup.cfg: [options.entry_points]console_scripts=hello-world=timmins. Console/GUI scripts are one use of the more general concept of entry points. Entry points more generally allow a packager to advertise behavior for discovery by other libraries and applications.
Entry points If you have any functions in your package that you would like to expose to be used as a command-line utility, you can add them to the console_scripts entry points. For example, if you have a function called main in example_module.py, then adding this to your setup.cfg will allow users to run my-example-utility as a shell command. Setuptools entry points When building a Python package, the most common way of exposing a command line interface (CLI) is to use the "scripts" keyword in setup.py.
In a setup.cfg file, you can define the entry_points section to specify console scripts or other entry points for your Python package. This is often used to create command.