Flit

Flit is an open-source packaging tool for Python designed to simplify the creation and distribution of Python packages. It emphasizes simplicity and speed, targeting small to medium-sized projects and pure-Python packages.

Configuration is done with a pyproject.toml file, avoiding the traditional setup.py. Metadata such as package name, version, authors, license, and dependencies are declared under tool.flit metadata, while packaging options specify what files to include in distributions. Flit can automatically determine package contents based on the project layout and common conventions.

Builds and distributions: Flit can build both source distributions (sdist) and wheel distributions, producing artifacts suitable for upload to PyPI and other repositories.

Publishing: The tool provides commands like flit build and flit publish to create and upload packages. Publishing handles authentication and interacts with PyPI using standard protocols. Flit is designed to support a straightforward packaging model and is intended to work without a setup.py.

Licensing and ecosystem: Flit is released under the MIT License and is maintained by a community of volunteers. It is part of the Python packaging ecosystem alongside setuptools, poetry, and hatch, and is especially popular for its minimal configuration requirements and quick setup, though it may not cover all packaging scenarios needed for more complex projects.