Building C and C++ Extensions

Python documentation

A C extension for CPython is a shared library (for example, a .so file on Linux, .pyd on Windows), which exports an initialization function.

See

Defining extension modules

for details.

Building C and C++ Extensions with setuptools

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Building, packaging and distributing extension modules is best done with third-party tools, and is out of scope of this document. One suitable tool is Setuptools, whose documentation can be found at

https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/setuptools.html

.

The

distutils

module, which was included in the standard library until Python 3.12, is now maintained as part of Setuptools.