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Python Distutils-SIG: Download

Current stable release

The current stable release is Distutils 1.0.2; you can download it as:

If you are running Python version 1.6 or later, you do not need to download the Distutils: they're included with Python. However, if you have a Distutils more recent than your Python, you might want to install it: see the Distutils README.txt file. Version 1.0.2 is identical to the version included in Python 2.1.

Older releases

Older versions are also available in the download directory, if you need them. (Or if you just enjoy encountering bugs that have been fixed or wishing for features that have already been added.)

Installing from source (Unix)

As you might expect, installing the Distutils themselves is quite painless. Under Unix, just unpack the tarball (or zip file, if you downloaded that): 

    gunzip -c Distutils-1.0.2.tar.gz | tar xf -
then switch into the directory unpacked from the tarball and run the setup script's install command: 
    cd Distutils-1.0.2
    python setup.py install
If you installed Python in the usual way (prefix and exec-prefix both /usr/local), this will put the Distutils in /usr/local/lib/python1.5/site-packages/distutils.

If you don't have permission to write to the Python library directory, you can install the Distutils (or any module distribution that uses the Distutils) to your home directory. For example, 

    python setup.py install --home=~
installs the Distutils to ~/lib/python/distutils.

Installing from source (Windows)

Installation under Windows is similar, but it's a bit more awkward because you have to open a command prompt (second nature to us Unix geeks, but a bit peculiar under Windows). Once you've unpacked the downloaded zip file, switch into the Distutils directory, for example: 
    cd \Temp\Distutils-1.0.2
(assuming you unpacked under \Temp) and run the setup script: 
    python setup.py install
This will install the Distutils directly under the Python installation directory, eg. C:\Program Files\Python.

The --home option isn't supported under Windows, but you can supply a --prefix option to override the Python installation directory.

Code snapshots

If you're interested in keeping on top of recent developments in the Distutils, I release periodic code snapshots. This lets me get relatively stable code out the door without going through all the bureaucracy of a full release (update documentation, changelog, etc.). Obviously, this code is a bit rougher and more likely to have new bugs. But it's a good middle ground if you don't want to follow the CVS tree.

There have been no code snapshots since Distutils 0.9.2.

Installing from a code snapshot is the same as from a stable release, except of course the name of the tarball to unpack is different.

If you really like to follow the bleeding edge, you can use anonymous CVS access to track changes to the code hour-by-hour. For the die-hard hacker only.