website/content/blog/pythonsetupdevelop.md

title	date	draft	tags	medium_enabled
Python setup.py develop	2020-02-21T22:42:55-05:00	false	Python	true

Deprecated in favor of pip install editable

I've found it to be incredibly helpful to emulate having a library installed on my system rather than depending on my local directory path to pick up my file edits. To do this in a python project where you've defined a setup.py, you can specify the command develop.

First uninstall whatever version of your library you have.

pip uninstall library

Then in your folder with the setup.py run the following command

python setup.py develop

This will then create a symlink from your site-packages directory to the directory in which your code lives.

Once you're ready to install it formally,

pip uninstall library
pip install .

Distribute it,

pip wheel .