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# 7. Uploading Packages to the Package Index

The Python Package Index (PyPI) not only stores the package info, but also the package data if the author of the package wishes to. The distutils command upload pushes the distribution files to PyPI.

The command is invoked immediately after building one or more distribution files. For example, the command

    python setup.py sdist bdist_wininst upload

will cause the source distribution and the Windows installer to be uploaded to PyPI. Note that these will be uploaded even if they are built using an earlier invocation of `setup.py`, but that only distributions named on the command line for the invocation including the upload command are uploaded.

The upload command uses the username, password, and repository URL from the `$HOME/.pypirc` file (see section The .pypirc file for more on this file). If a register command was previously called in the same command, and if the password was entered in the prompt, upload will reuse the entered password. This is useful if you do not want to store a clear text password in the `$HOME/.pypirc` file.

You can specify another PyPI server with the --repository=*url* option:

    python setup.py sdist bdist_wininst upload -r http://example.com/pypi

See section The .pypirc file for more on defining several servers.

You can use the --sign option to tell upload to sign each uploaded file using GPG (GNU Privacy Guard). The gpg program must be available for execution on the system PATH. You can also specify which key to use for signing using the --identity=*name* option.

Other upload options include --repository= or --repository= where url is the url of the server and section the name of the section in `$HOME/.pypirc`, and --show-response (which displays the full response text from the PyPI server for help in debugging upload problems).

## 7.1. PyPI package display

The `long_description` field plays a special role at PyPI. It is used by the server to display a home page for the registered package.

If you use the reStructuredText syntax for this field, PyPI will parse it and display an HTML output for the package home page.

The `long_description` field can be attached to a text file located in the package:

    from distutils.core import setup

    with open('README.txt') as file:
        long_description = file.read()

    setup(name='Distutils',
          long_description=long_description)

In that case, `README.txt` is a regular reStructuredText text file located in the root of the package besides `setup.py`.

To prevent registering broken reStructuredText content, you can use the rst2html program that is provided by the `docutils` package and check the `long_description` from the command line:

    $ python setup.py --long-description | rst2html.py > output.html

`docutils` will display a warning if there’s something wrong with your syntax.

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