# flit

> A simple packaging tool for simple packages.

- **URL**: https://www.freshcrate.ai/projects/flit
- **Author**: pypi
- **Category**: Developer Tools
- **Latest version**: `main@2026-04-29` (2026-04-29)
- **License**: Unknown
- **Source**: https://github.com/pypa/flit
- **Homepage**: https://pypi.org/project/flit/
- **Language**: Python
- **GitHub**: 2,246 stars, 156 forks
- **Registry**: pypi (`flit`)
- **Tags**: `pypi`

## Description

**Flit** is a simple way to put Python packages and modules on PyPI.
It tries to require less thought about packaging and help you avoid common
mistakes.
See `Why use Flit? <https://flit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/rationale.html>`_ for
more about how it compares to other Python packaging tools.

Install
-------

::

    $ python3 -m pip install flit

Flit requires Python 3 and therefore needs to be installed using the Python 3
version of pip.

Python 2 modules can be distributed using Flit, but need to be importable on
Python 3 without errors.

Usage
-----

Say you're writing a module ``foobar`` — either as a single file ``foobar.py``,
or as a directory — and you want to distribute it.

1. Make sure that foobar's docstring starts with a one-line summary of what
   the module is, and that it has a ``__version__``:

   .. code-block:: python

       """An amazing sample package!"""

       __version__ = "0.1"

2. Install flit if you don't already have it::

       python3 -m pip install flit

3. Run ``flit init`` in the directory containing the module to create a
   ``pyproject.toml`` file. It will look something like this:

   .. code-block:: ini

       [build-system]
       requires = ["flit_core >=3.2,<4"]
       build-backend = "flit_core.buildapi"

       [project]
       name = "foobar"
       authors = [{name = "Sir Robin", email = "robin@camelot.uk"}]
       dynamic = ["version", "description"]

       [project.urls]
       Home = "https://github.com/sirrobin/foobar"

   You can edit this file to add other metadata, for example to set up
   command line scripts. See the
   `pyproject.toml page <https://flit.readthedocs.io/en/latest/pyproject_toml.html#scripts-section>`_
   of the documentation.

   If you have already got a ``flit.ini`` file to use with older versions of
   Flit, convert it to ``pyproject.toml`` by running ``python3 -m flit.tomlify``.

4. Run this command to upload your code to PyPI::

       flit publish

Once your package is published, people can install it using *pip* just like
any other package. In most cases, pip will download a 'wheel' package, a
standard format it knows how to install. If you specifically ask pip to install
an 'sdist' package, it will install and use Flit in a temporary environment.


To install a package locally for development, run::

    flit install [--symlink] [--python path/to/python]

Flit packages a single importable module or package at a time, using the import
name as the name on PyPI. All subpackages and data files within a package are
included automatically.

## Recent releases

| Version | Date | Urgency | Changes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `main@2026-04-29` | 2026-04-29 | High | Latest activity on main branch |
| `3.12.0` | 2026-04-21 | Low | Imported from PyPI (3.12.0) |
| `3.11.0` | 2025-02-19 | Low | Tag 3.11.0 |
| `3.10.1` | 2024-11-02 | Low | Tag 3.10.1 |
| `3.10.0` | 2024-10-31 | Low | Tag 3.10.0 |
| `3.9.0` | 2023-05-14 | Low | Tag 3.9.0 |
| `3.8.0` | 2022-11-05 | Low | Tag 3.8.0 |
| `3.7.1` | 2022-02-23 | Low | Tag 3.7.1 |
| `3.7.0` | 2022-02-22 | Low | Tag 3.7.0 |
| `3.6.0` | 2021-12-27 | Low | Tag 3.6.0 |

## Citation

- HTML: https://www.freshcrate.ai/projects/flit
- Markdown: https://www.freshcrate.ai/projects/flit.md
- Dependencies JSON: https://www.freshcrate.ai/api/projects/flit/deps

_Generated by freshcrate.ai. Indexes pypi releases for AI-agent ecosystem packages._