How should I handle importing third-party libraries within my setup.py script?

I’m ignoring licensing issues in this answer. You definetly need to take these
into account before you really do a release.

Is it acceptable to rely on third-party libraries like this in setup.py

Yes, it is acceptable but generally these should be minimized, especially if
these are modules which have no obvious use for the end-user. Noone likes to
have packages they don’t need or use.

what is the recommended approach to using them?

There are basically 3 options:

• Bootstrap them (for example use

  pip

  to programmatically install packages). For example

  setuptools

  provides an

  ez_setup.py

  file that can be used to bootstrap

  setuptools

  . Maybe that can be customized to download and install

  appdirs

  .

• Include them (especially if it’s a small package) in your project. For example

  appdirs

  is basically just a single file module. Pretty easy to copy and maintain in your project. Be very careful with licensing issues when you do that!

• Fail gracefully when it’s not possible to import them and let the user install them. For example:

  try:import appdirs

  except importError:
  raise importError(‘this package requires “appdirs” to be installed. ‘
  ‘Install it first: “pip install appdirs”.’)