Packaging

When you are programming, usually you are solving a problem - the programming is simply a means to an end. If that’s the case, then packaging is a means to a means to an end. This often makes packaging the last thing you think about, but it’s actually one of the most important parts of any work, as it’s what makes code obtainable and reusable!

Packaging is absolutely critical as soon as you:

Work on more than one thing
Share your work with anyone (even if not as a package)
Work in more than one place
Upgrade or change anything on your computer

Unfortunately, packing has a lot of historical cruft, bad practices that have easy solutions today but are still propagated. This material tries to correct that by showing you a clean, modern way to write and work with Python packages.

See Also

This is a tutorial. For reference material, you should bookmark the following guides:

learn.scientific-python.org/development

packaging.python.org

Prerequisites

Basic Python

Light familiarity with pytest may be helpful

Schedule

	Setup	Download files required for the lesson
00:00	1. Environments and task runners	How do you install and manage packages? How can you ensure others run the same code you do?
00:20	2. Python to package	How do we take code in a Jupyter Notebook or Python script and turn that into a package? What are the minimum elements required for a Python package? How do you set up tests?
00:45	3. Other files that belong with your package	What other files are important parts of your software package? What software license should you use for your project?
01:00	4. Metadata	What metadata is important to add to your package? How to I add common functionality, like executable scripts?
01:15	5. Versioning	How do you choose your versions? How do you set version limits on dependencies? How do you set a version?
01:30	6. Documentation	How do I document my project?
01:50	7. Checks and tests	How do you ensure your code will work well?
02:10	8. CI with GitHub Actions	How do you ensure code keeps passing
02:30	9. Publishing package and citation	How do I publish a package? How do I make my work citable?
02:45	Finish

The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.