Editing Advanced Scripting (section)

==== Overview ====
The [http://www.python.org/doc/2.2.3/ext/distributing.html Python distutils pacakge] is a great method for distributing your modules over various platforms.  It handles platform specific issues as well as simplifying the overall install process.  For us, those module-builders, we need to create the distuils' setup.py script, and given the above -- that's the last step.

More detailed information can be found one the Python documentation page for [http://docs.python.org/ext/building.html installing C/C++ modules].  There is also information on [http://www.python.org/doc/2.2.3/ext/distributing.html how to build source and binary distribution packages].  

For example of how powerful disutils is, I have [cealign] setup to install as simply as:
<source lang="bash">
python setup.py build cealign
python setup.py install cealign
</source>

PyMOL also uses distutils for it's source-install.  If more people understood distutils, I think they would install PyMOL from source since you get all the latest features.