27.16. distutils — Building and installing Python modules

The distutils package provides support for building and installing additional modules into a Python installation. The new modules may be either 100%-pure Python, or may be extension modules written in C, or may be collections of Python packages which include modules coded in both Python and C.

Deprecated since version 3.3: packaging replaces Distutils. See Distributing Python Projects and Installing Python Projects.

User documentation and API reference are provided in another document:

See also

Distributing Python Modules

The manual for developers and packagers of Python modules. This describes how to prepare distutils-based packages so that they may be easily installed into an existing Python installation. If also contains instructions for end-users wanting to install a distutils-based package, Installing Python Modules.