Packaging and distributing libraries

A software library is a reusable piece of code that can be used as a component of a larger application or another library. Libraries usually focus on solving limited sets of problems of a specific technical area, but there is no limit for library size. For the purpose of this chapter, we will consider frameworks to be libraries too. That's because frameworks also can be understood as components of an application, although on a larger and more generic scale.

Libraries in Python are distributed in the form of packages (or modules). We've been using them throughout the book already. Most of the packages that we've obtained from PyPI in previous chapters can in fact be considered libraries. Most of the open-source Python libraries are distributed through PyPI and that's why we will discuss this topic through the prism of distributing open-source packages.

You should know how to create packages even if you are not interested...