entry_points does not create custom scripts with pip, only with easy_install in Python

Question

I'm packaging a script for the first time in python. It can be used both as a module, and an executable so I found out I could use

entry_points = {
    'console_scripts': [
        'myscript = myscript:main',
    ],
}

in my setup.py to automatically generate a script in the user's python-x.x.x/bin directory.

My python script ends with

if __name__ == '__main__': main()

where main() parses command-line input.

I packaged this using the command:

python setup.py sdist

and then tested the distribution as:

easy_install dist/myscript-0.3.2.tar.gz

This puts a myscript executable in my python-2.7.5/bin as expected.

But this doesn't:

pip install dist/myscript-0.3.2.tar.gz

Any ideas why? My directory tree looks like:

Root/
|-- MANIFEST.in
|-- README.rst
|-- dist
|   `-- myscript-0.3.2.tar.gz
|-- myscript.egg-info
|   |-- ...
|-- myscript.py
|-- setup.cfg
|-- setup.py
`-- test
    |-- ...

and my setup.py roughly looks like:

import os

from setuptools import setup

def read(*paths):
 """Build a file path from *paths* and return the contents."""
 with open(os.path.join(*paths), 'r') as f:
  return f.read()

setup(
 name='myscript',
 version='0.3.2',
 description='bla',
 long_description=(read('README.rst')),
 url='http://url',
 license='LGPL',
 author='Me',
 author_email='me@me.com',
 py_modules=['myscript'],
 include_package_data=True,
 classifiers=[
  'Development Status :: 5 - Production/Stable',
  'Intended Audience :: Developers',
  'Natural Language :: English',
  'License :: OSI Approved :: GNU Library or Lesser General Public License (LGPL)',
  'Operating System :: OS Independent',
  'Programming Language :: Python',
  'Programming Language :: Python :: 2',
  'Programming Language :: Python :: 2.7',
  'Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries :: Python Modules',
 ],
 install_requires=['Texttable'],
 entry_points = {
  'console_scripts': [
   'myscript = myscript:main',
  ],
 }
)

Answer 1

It seems that after uploading the package to PyPI using these instructions, pip install myscript did place an executable in my python bin. Must have been a local issue.

Answer 2

I had a similar experience of pip install . not working from the project's directory. It turned out that pip wasn't executing all of setup.py logic because it assumed that the dependency to my project was already met since my package was in sys.path, which includes the working directory. I found three work-arounds. I could use the editable or upgrade flag to force it to install everything:

pip install --editable . -- likely to work (but depends on local pip config)

pip install --upgrade . -- works

pip install --upgrade-strategy=only-if-needed . -- does not work

Or I could go to a different working directory and execute it with an absolute path to the project directory:

pip install $HOME/src/project_dir

Answer 3

Is the main function truly in the mypackage package? For that, it should be defined or imported in the __init__.py file of that package.

If your project structure looks like this:

mypackage/
├── mypackage/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── main.py
└── setup.py

Then you need to either:

• use mypackage.main:main in your setup.py
• write from main import main in your __init__.py