What does setup.py build do?

Question

I read in the Python documentation:

The build command is responsible for putting the files to install into a build directory.

I fear this documentation may be incomplete. Does python setup.py build do anything else? I expect this step to generate object files with Python bytecode, which will be interpreted at execution time by Python VM.

Also, I'm building an automated code check in my source code repository. I want to know if there is any benefit of running setup.py build (does it do any checks?) or is a static code/PEP8 checker such as Pylint good enough?

Answer 1

Does python setupy.py build do anything else?

If your package contains C extensions (or defines some custom compilation tasks), they will be compiled too. If you only have Python files in your package, copying is all build does.

I expect this step to generate object files with Python bytecode, which will be interpreted at execution time by Python VM.

No, build does not do that. This happens at install stage.

I want to know if there is any benefit of running setup.py build (Does it do any checks?) or is a static code/PEP8 checker such as Pylint good enough?

By all means, run pylint. build does not even check the syntax.