Differences between distribute, distutils, setuptools and distutils2?

Question

The Situation

I’m trying to port an open-source library to Python 3. (SymPy, if anyone is wondering.)

So, I need to run 2to3 automatically w

Answer 1

NOTE: Answer deprecated, Distribute now obsolete. This answer is no longer valid since the Python Packaging Authority was formed and has done a lot of work cleaning this up.

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Yep, you got it. :-o I think at this time the preferred package is Distribute, which is a fork of setuptools, which are an extension of distutils (the original packaging system). Setuptools was not being maintained so is was forked and renamed, however when installed it uses the package name of setuptools! I think most Python developers now use Distribute, and I can say for sure that I do.