2.1 Platform variations

You should always run the setup command from the distribution root directory, i.e. the top-level subdirectory that the module source distribution unpacks into. For example, if you've just downloaded a module source distribution foo-1.0.tar.gz onto a Unix system, the normal thing to do is:

gunzip -c foo-1.0.tar.gz | tar xf -    # unpacks into directory foo-1.0
cd foo-1.0
python setup.py install

On Windows, you'd probably download foo-1.0.zip. If you downloaded the archive file to C:\Temp, then it would unpack into C:\Temp\foo-1.0; you can use either a GUI archive manipulator (such as WinZip) or a command-line tool (such as unzip or pkunzip) to unpack the archive. Then, open a command prompt window (``DOS box''), and run:

cd c:\Temp\foo-1.0
python setup.py install

On MacOS, you have to go through a bit more effort to supply command-line arguments to the setup script:

hit option-double-click on the script's icon (or option-drop it onto the Python interpreter's icon)
press the ``Set unix-style command line'' button
set the ``Keep stdio window open on termination'' if you're interested in seeing the output of the setup script (which is usually voluminous and often useful)
when the command-line dialog pops up, enter ``install'' (you can, of course, enter any Distutils command-line as described in this document or in Distributing Python Modules: just leave off the initial python setup.py and you'll be fine)

** this should change: every Distutils setup script will need command-line arguments for every run (and should probably keep stdout around), so all this should happen automatically for setup scripts **

See About this document... for information on suggesting changes.