.. highlight:: c

.. _building:

---

Building C and C++ Extensions

---

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 :ref:extension-modules for details.

.. highlight:: c

.. _install-index: .. _setuptools-index:

Building C and C++ Extensions with setuptools

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