
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).


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.
