Packaging click app without setuptools

[NeoCortex97]

Hi, I wanted to use pdm to develop a cli app with click. And I would like my package to register commands for my app, but I don't know how.
Do you have any leads for me?

[agammann]

Use the standard [project.scripts] entry point with pdm-backend. You don't need setuptools for this.

For a small src/click_demo package, this pyproject.toml works:

[project]
name = "click-demo"
version = "0.1.0"
requires-python = ">=3.12,<3.13"
dependencies = ["click>=8,<9"]

[project.scripts]
hello-demo = "click_demo.cli:main"

[build-system]
requires = ["pdm-backend"]
build-backend = "pdm.backend"

[tool.pdm]
distribution = true

Create an empty src/click_demo/__init__.py and put this in src/click_demo/cli.py:

import click

@click.command()
@click.option("--name", default="world")
def main(name: str) -> None:
    click.echo(f"Hello, {name}!")

Then:

pdm install
pdm run hello-demo --name Ada
pdm build --no-sdist

I ran these with PDM 2.29.2 and Python 3.12.14. The command printed Hello, Ada!, and the built wheel contained the hello-demo = click_demo.cli:main console entry point. Adjust the Python requirement to your supported versions.

[project.scripts] makes a command available to people who install your package. [tool.pdm.scripts] defines development tasks in the PDM project, which is a different purpose. See PDM's explanation of the two script tables.