docs/userguide/keywords.rst

New and Changed ``setup()`` Keywords
====================================

The following keyword arguments to ``setup()`` are added or changed by
``setuptools``.  All of them are optional; you do not have to supply them
unless you need the associated ``setuptools`` feature.

``include_package_data``
    If set to ``True``, this tells ``setuptools`` to automatically include any
    data files it finds inside your package directories that are specified by
    your ``MANIFEST.in`` file.  For more information, see the section on
    :ref:`Including Data Files`.

``exclude_package_data``
    A dictionary mapping package names to lists of glob patterns that should
    be *excluded* from your package directories.  You can use this to trim back
    any excess files included by ``include_package_data``.  For a complete
    description and examples, see the section on :ref:`Including Data Files`.

``package_data``
    A dictionary mapping package names to lists of glob patterns.  For a
    complete description and examples, see the section on :ref:`Including
    Data Files`.  You do not need to use this option if you are using
    ``include_package_data``, unless you need to add e.g. files that are
    generated by your setup script and build process.  (And are therefore not
    in source control or are files that you don't want to include in your
    source distribution.)

``zip_safe``
    A boolean (True or False) flag specifying whether the project can be
    safely installed and run from a zip file.  If this argument is not
    supplied, the ``bdist_egg`` command will have to analyze all of your
    project's contents for possible problems each time it builds an egg.

``install_requires``
    A string or list of strings specifying what other distributions need to
    be installed when this one is.  See the section on :ref:`Declaring
    Dependencies` for details and examples of the format of this argument.

``entry_points``
    A dictionary mapping entry point group names to strings or lists of strings
    defining the entry points.  Entry points are used to support dynamic
    discovery of services or plugins provided by a project.  See :ref:`Dynamic
    Discovery of Services and Plugins` for details and examples of the format
    of this argument.  In addition, this keyword is used to support
    :ref:`Automatic Script Creation <entry_points>`.

``extras_require``
    A dictionary mapping names of "extras" (optional features of your project)
    to strings or lists of strings specifying what other distributions must be
    installed to support those features.  See the section on :ref:`Declaring
    Dependencies` for details and examples of the format of this argument.

``python_requires``
    A string corresponding to a version specifier (as defined in PEP 440) for
    the Python version, used to specify the Requires-Python defined in PEP 345.

``setup_requires``
    A string or list of strings specifying what other distributions need to
    be present in order for the *setup script* to run.  ``setuptools`` will
    attempt to obtain these (using pip if available) before processing the
    rest of the setup script or commands.  This argument is needed if you
    are using distutils extensions as part of your build process; for
    example, extensions that process setup() arguments and turn them into
    EGG-INFO metadata files.

    (Note: projects listed in ``setup_requires`` will NOT be automatically
    installed on the system where the setup script is being run.  They are
    simply downloaded to the ./.eggs directory if they're not locally available
    already.  If you want them to be installed, as well as being available
    when the setup script is run, you should add them to ``install_requires``
    **and** ``setup_requires``.)

``dependency_links``
    A list of strings naming URLs to be searched when satisfying dependencies.
    These links will be used if needed to install packages specified by
    ``setup_requires`` or ``tests_require``.  They will also be written into
    the egg's metadata for use during install by tools that support them.

``namespace_packages``
    A list of strings naming the project's "namespace packages".  A namespace
    package is a package that may be split across multiple project
    distributions.  For example, Zope 3's ``zope`` package is a namespace
    package, because subpackages like ``zope.interface`` and ``zope.publisher``
    may be distributed separately.  The egg runtime system can automatically
    merge such subpackages into a single parent package at runtime, as long
    as you declare them in each project that contains any subpackages of the
    namespace package, and as long as the namespace package's ``__init__.py``
    does not contain any code other than a namespace declaration.  See the
    section below on :ref:`Namespace Packages` for more information.

``test_suite``
    A string naming a ``unittest.TestCase`` subclass (or a package or module
    containing one or more of them, or a method of such a subclass), or naming
    a function that can be called with no arguments and returns a
    ``unittest.TestSuite``.  If the named suite is a module, and the module
    has an ``additional_tests()`` function, it is called and the results are
    added to the tests to be run.  If the named suite is a package, any
    submodules and subpackages are recursively added to the overall test suite.

    Specifying this argument enables use of the :ref:`test <test>` command to run the
    specified test suite, e.g. via ``setup.py test``.  See the section on the
    :ref:`test <test>` command below for more details.

    New in 41.5.0: Deprecated the test command.

``tests_require``
    If your project's tests need one or more additional packages besides those
    needed to install it, you can use this option to specify them.  It should
    be a string or list of strings specifying what other distributions need to
    be present for the package's tests to run.  When you run the ``test``
    command, ``setuptools`` will  attempt to obtain these (using pip if
    available).  Note that these required projects will *not* be installed on
    the system where the tests are run, but only downloaded to the project's setup
    directory if they're not already installed locally.

    New in 41.5.0: Deprecated the test command.

.. _test_loader:

``test_loader``
    If you would like to use a different way of finding tests to run than what
    setuptools normally uses, you can specify a module name and class name in
    this argument.  The named class must be instantiable with no arguments, and
    its instances must support the ``loadTestsFromNames()`` method as defined
    in the Python ``unittest`` module's ``TestLoader`` class.  Setuptools will
    pass only one test "name" in the ``names`` argument: the value supplied for
    the ``test_suite`` argument.  The loader you specify may interpret this
    string in any way it likes, as there are no restrictions on what may be
    contained in a ``test_suite`` string.

    The module name and class name must be separated by a ``:``.  The default
    value of this argument is ``"setuptools.command.test:ScanningLoader"``.  If
    you want to use the default ``unittest`` behavior, you can specify
    ``"unittest:TestLoader"`` as your ``test_loader`` argument instead.  This
    will prevent automatic scanning of submodules and subpackages.

    The module and class you specify here may be contained in another package,
    as long as you use the ``tests_require`` option to ensure that the package
    containing the loader class is available when the ``test`` command is run.

    New in 41.5.0: Deprecated the test command.

``eager_resources``
    A list of strings naming resources that should be extracted together, if
    any of them is needed, or if any C extensions included in the project are
    imported.  This argument is only useful if the project will be installed as
    a zipfile, and there is a need to have all of the listed resources be
    extracted to the filesystem *as a unit*.  Resources listed here
    should be "/"-separated paths, relative to the source root, so to list a
    resource ``foo.png`` in package ``bar.baz``, you would include the string
    ``bar/baz/foo.png`` in this argument.

    If you only need to obtain resources one at a time, or you don't have any C
    extensions that access other files in the project (such as data files or
    shared libraries), you probably do NOT need this argument and shouldn't
    mess with it.  For more details on how this argument works, see the section
    below on :ref:`Automatic Resource Extraction`.

``project_urls``
    An arbitrary map of URL names to hyperlinks, allowing more extensible
    documentation of where various resources can be found than the simple
    ``url`` and ``download_url`` options provide.