Welcome to twine’s documentation!

Twine is a utility for publishing Python packages on PyPI.

It provides build system independent uploads of source and binary distribution artifacts for both new and existing projects.

Why Should I Use This?

The goal of Twine is to improve PyPI interaction by improving security and testability.

The biggest reason to use Twine is that it securely authenticates you to PyPI over HTTPS using a verified connection, regardless of the underlying Python version. Meanwhile, python setup.py upload will only work correctly and securely if your build system, Python version, and underlying operating system are configured properly.

Secondly, Twine encourages you to build your distribution files. python setup.py upload only allows you to upload a package as a final step after building with distutils or setuptools, within the same command invocation. This means that you cannot test the exact file you’re going to upload to PyPI to ensure that it works before uploading it.

Finally, Twine allows you to pre-sign your files and pass the .asc files into the command line invocation (twine upload myproject-1.0.1.tar.gz myproject-1.0.1.tar.gz.asc). This enables you to be assured that you’re typing your gpg passphrase into gpg itself and not anything else, since you will be the one directly executing gpg --detach-sign -a <filename>.

Features

  • Verified HTTPS connections
  • Uploading doesn’t require executing setup.py
  • Uploading files that have already been created, allowing testing of distributions before release
  • Supports uploading any packaging format (including wheels)

Installation

$ pip install twine

Using Twine

  1. Create some distributions in the normal way:

    $ python setup.py sdist bdist_wheel

  2. Upload with twine to Test PyPI and verify things look right. Twine will automatically prompt for your username and password:

    $ twine upload -r testpypi dist/*
username: ...
password:
...

  3. Upload to PyPI:

    $ twine upload dist/*

  4. Done!

More documentation on using Twine to upload packages to PyPI is in the Python Packaging User Guide.

Commands

twine upload

Uploads one or more distributions to a repository.

$ twine upload -h
usage: twine upload [-h] [-r REPOSITORY] [--repository-url REPOSITORY_URL]
                    [-s] [--sign-with SIGN_WITH] [-i IDENTITY] [-u USERNAME]
                    [-p PASSWORD] [-c COMMENT] [--config-file CONFIG_FILE]
                    [--skip-existing] [--cert path] [--client-cert path]
                    [--verbose] [--disable-progress-bar]
                    dist [dist ...]

positional arguments:
  dist                  The distribution files to upload to the repository
                        (package index). Usually dist/* . May additionally
                        contain a .asc file to include an existing signature
                        with the file upload.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r REPOSITORY, --repository REPOSITORY
                        The repository (package index) to upload the package
                        to. Should be a section in the config file (default:
                        pypi). (Can also be set via TWINE_REPOSITORY
                        environment variable.)
  --repository-url REPOSITORY_URL
                        The repository (package index) URL to upload the
                        package to. This overrides --repository. (Can also be
                        set via TWINE_REPOSITORY_URL environment variable.)
  -s, --sign            Sign files to upload using GPG.
  --sign-with SIGN_WITH
                        GPG program used to sign uploads (default: gpg).
  -i IDENTITY, --identity IDENTITY
                        GPG identity used to sign files.
  -u USERNAME, --username USERNAME
                        The username to authenticate to the repository
                        (package index) as. (Can also be set via
                        TWINE_USERNAME environment variable.)
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        The password to authenticate to the repository
                        (package index) with. (Can also be set via
                        TWINE_PASSWORD environment variable.)
  --non-interactive     Do not interactively prompt for username/password
                        if the required credentials are missing. (Can also
                        be set via TWINE_NON_INTERACTIVE environment
                        variable.)
  -c COMMENT, --comment COMMENT
                        The comment to include with the distribution file.
  --config-file CONFIG_FILE
                        The .pypirc config file to use.
  --skip-existing       Continue uploading files if one already exists. (Only
                        valid when uploading to PyPI. Other implementations
                        may not support this.)
  --cert path           Path to alternate CA bundle (can also be set via
                        TWINE_CERT environment variable).
  --client-cert path    Path to SSL client certificate, a single file
                        containing the private key and the certificate in PEM
                        format.
  --verbose             Show verbose output.
  --disable-progress-bar
                        Disable the progress bar.

twine check

Checks whether your distribution’s long description will render correctly on PyPI.

$ twine check -h
usage: twine check [-h] dist [dist ...]

positional arguments:
  dist        The distribution files to check, usually dist/*

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

twine register

WARNING: The register command is no longer necessary if you are uploading to pypi.org. As such, it is no longer supported in Warehouse (the new PyPI software running on pypi.org). However, you may need this if you are using a different package index.

For completeness, its usage:

$ twine register -h

usage: twine register [-h] -r REPOSITORY [--repository-url REPOSITORY_URL]
                      [-u USERNAME] [-p PASSWORD] [-c COMMENT]
                      [--config-file CONFIG_FILE] [--cert path]
                      [--client-cert path]
                      package

positional arguments:
  package               File from which we read the package metadata.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -r REPOSITORY, --repository REPOSITORY
                        The repository (package index) to register the package
                        to. Should be a section in the config file. (Can also
                        be set via TWINE_REPOSITORY environment variable.)
                        Initial package registration no longer necessary on
                        pypi.org:
                        https://packaging.python.org/guides/migrating-to-pypi-
                        org/
  --repository-url REPOSITORY_URL
                        The repository (package index) URL to register the
                        package to. This overrides --repository. (Can also be
                        set via TWINE_REPOSITORY_URL environment variable.)
  -u USERNAME, --username USERNAME
                        The username to authenticate to the repository
                        (package index) as. (Can also be set via
                        TWINE_USERNAME environment variable.)
  -p PASSWORD, --password PASSWORD
                        The password to authenticate to the repository
                        (package index) with. (Can also be set via
                        TWINE_PASSWORD environment variable.)
  --non-interactive     Do not interactively prompt for username/password
                        if the required credentials are missing. (Can also
                        be set via TWINE_NON_INTERACTIVE environment
                        variable.)
  -c COMMENT, --comment COMMENT
                        The comment to include with the distribution file.
  --config-file CONFIG_FILE
                        The .pypirc config file to use.
  --cert path           Path to alternate CA bundle (can also be set via
                        TWINE_CERT environment variable).
  --client-cert path    Path to SSL client certificate, a single file
                        containing the private key and the certificate in PEM
                        format.

Configuration

Twine can read repository configuration from a .pypirc file, either in your home directory, or provided with the --config-file option. For details on writing and using .pypirc, see the specification in the Python Packaging User Guide.

Environment Variables

Twine also supports configuration via environment variables. Options passed on the command line will take precedence over options set via environment variables. Definition via environment variable is helpful in environments where it is not convenient to create a .pypirc file (for example, on a CI/build server).

  • TWINE_USERNAME - the username to use for authentication to the repository.
  • TWINE_PASSWORD - the password to use for authentication to the repository.
  • TWINE_REPOSITORY - the repository configuration, either defined as a section in .pypirc or provided as a full URL.
  • TWINE_REPOSITORY_URL - the repository URL to use.
  • TWINE_CERT - custom CA certificate to use for repositories with self-signed or untrusted certificates.
  • TWINE_NON_INTERACTIVE - Do not interactively prompt for username/password if the required credentials are missing.

Keyring Support

Instead of typing in your password every time you upload a distribution, Twine allows storing a username and password securely using keyring. Keyring is installed with Twine but for some systems (Linux mainly) may require additional installation steps.

Once Twine is installed, use the keyring program to set a username and password to use for each package index (repository) to which you may upload.

For example, to set a username and password for PyPI:

$ keyring set https://upload.pypi.org/legacy/ your-username

or

$ python3 -m keyring set https://upload.pypi.org/legacy/ your-username

and enter the password when prompted.

For a different repository, replace the URL with the relevant repository URL. For example, for Test PyPI, use https://test.pypi.org/legacy/.

The next time you run twine, it will prompt you for a username and will grab the appropriate password from the keyring.

Note: If you are using Linux in a headless environment (such as on a server) you’ll need to do some additional steps to ensure that Keyring can store secrets securely. See Using Keyring on headless systems.

Disabling Keyring

In most cases, simply not setting a password with keyring will allow Twine to fall back to prompting for a password. In some cases, the presence of Keyring will cause unexpected or undesirable prompts from the backing system. In these cases, it may be desirable to disable Keyring altogether. To disable Keyring, simply invoke:

$ keyring --disable

or

$ python -m keyring --disable

That command will configure for the current user the “null” keyring, effectively disabling the functionality, and allowing Twine to prompt for passwords.

See twine 338 for discussion and background.

Resources

Contributing

See our developer documentation for how to get started, an architectural overview, and our future development plans.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Twine project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms, and mailing lists is expected to follow the PSF Code of Conduct.

Contributing

We are happy you have decided to contribute to twine.

Please see the GitHub repository for code and more documentation, and the official Python Packaging User Guide for user documentation. You can also join #pypa or #pypa-dev on Freenode, or the distutils-sig mailing list, to ask questions or get involved.

Getting started

We recommend you use a virtual environment, so that twine and its dependencies do not interfere with other packages installed on your machine.

Clone the twine repository from GitHub, then make and activate a virtual environment that uses Python 3.6 or newer as the default Python. For example:

cd /path/to/your/local/twine
python3.6 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Then, run the following command:

pip install -e .

Now, in your virtual environment, twine is pointing at your local copy, so when you make changes, you can easily see their effect.

We use tox to run tests, check code style, and build the documentation. To install tox in your active virtual environment, run:

pip install tox
Building the documentation

Additions and edits to twine’s documentation are welcome and appreciated.

To preview the docs while you’re making changes, run:

tox -e watch-docs

Then open a web browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000.

When you’re done making changes, lint and build the docs locally before making a pull request. In your active virtual environment, run:

tox -e docs

The HTML of the docs will be written to docs/_build/html.

Code style

To automatically reformat your changes with isort and black, run:

tox -e format

To detect any remaining code smells with flake8, run:

tox -e lint

To perform strict type-checking using mypy, run:

tox -e types

Any errors from lint or types need to be fixed manually.

Additionally, we prefer that import statements be used for packages and modules only, rather than individual classes or functions.

Testing

We use pytest for writing and running tests.

To run the tests in your virtual environment, run:

tox -e py

To pass options to pytest, e.g. the name of a test, run:

tox -e py -- tests/test_upload.py::test_exception_for_http_status

Twine is continuously tested against Python 3.6, 3.7, and 3.8 using GitHub Actions. To run the tests against a specific version, e.g. Python 3.6, you will need it installed on your machine. Then, run:

tox -e py36

To run the “integration” tests of uploading to real package indexes, run:

tox -e integration

To run the tests against all supported Python versions, check code style, and build the documentation, run:

tox
Submitting changes
  1. Fork the GitHub repository.
  2. Make a branch off of master and commit your changes to it.
  3. Run the tests, check code style, and build the docs as described above.
  4. Ensure that your name is added to the end of the AUTHORS file using the format Name <email@domain.com> (url), where the (url) portion is optional.
  5. Submit a pull request to the master branch on GitHub.

Architectural overview

Twine is a command-line tool for interacting with PyPI securely over HTTPS. Its three purposes are to be:

  1. A user-facing tool for publishing on pypi.org
  2. A user-facing tool for publishing on other Python package indexes (e.g., devpi instances)
  3. A useful API for other programs (e.g., zest.releaser) to call for publishing on any Python package index

Currently, twine has two principle functions: uploading new packages and registering new projects (register is no longer supported on PyPI, and is in Twine for use with other package indexes).

Its command line arguments are parsed in twine/cli.py. The code for registering new projects is in twine/commands/register.py, and the code for uploading is in twine/commands/upload.py. The file twine/package.py contains a single class, PackageFile, which hashes the project files and extracts their metadata. The file twine/repository.py contains the Repository class, whose methods control the URL the package is uploaded to (which the user can specify either as a default, in the .pypirc file, or pass on the command line), and the methods that upload the package securely to a URL.

Where Twine gets configuration and credentials

A user can set the repository URL, username, and/or password via command line, .pypirc files, environment variables, and keyring.

Adding a maintainer

A checklist for adding a new maintainer to the project.

  1. Add them as a Member in the GitHub repo settings.
  2. Get them Test PyPI and canon PyPI usernames and add them as a Maintainer on our Test PyPI project and canon PyPI.

Making a new release

A checklist for creating, testing, and distributing a new version.

  1. Add user-facing changes to docs/changelog.rst.
  2. Choose a version number, e.g. 3.2.0.
  3. Add a :release: line to docs/changelog.rst.
  4. Commit and open a pull request for review.
  5. Merge the pull request, and ensure the GitHub Actions build passes.
  6. Create a new git tag with git tag -m "Release v{version}" {version}.
  7. Push the new tag with git push upstream {version}.
  8. Watch the release in Travis.
  9. Send announcement email to distutils-sig mailing list and celebrate.

Future development

See our open issues.

In the future, pip and twine may merge into a single tool; see ongoing discussion.

Changelog

3.2.0 2020-06-24

  • [Feature] #231: Add type annotations, checked with mypy, with PEP 561 support for users of Twine’s API
  • [Feature] #602: Require repository URL scheme to be http or https
  • [Feature] #652: Print packages and signatures to be uploaded when using --verbose option
  • [Feature] #649: Use red text when printing errors on the command line
  • [Feature] #666: Improve display of HTTP errors during upload
  • [Bug] #601: Clarify error messages for archive format
  • [Bug] #611: Fix inaccurate retry message during upload
  • [Bug] #612: Don’t raise an exception when Python version can’t be parsed from filename
  • [Bug] #655: Update URL to .pypirc specification

3.1.1 2019-11-27

  • [Bug] #548: Restore --non-interactive as a flag not expecting an argument.

3.1.0 2019-11-23

  • [Feature] #547: Add support for specifying --non-interactive as an environment variable.

3.0.0 2019-11-18

  • [Feature] #518: Add Python 3.8 to classifiers.
  • [Feature] #524: Twine now unconditionally requires the keyring library and no longer supports uninstalling keyring as a means to disable that functionality. Instead, use keyring --disable keyring functionality if necessary.
  • [Feature] #489: Add --non-interactive flag to abort upload rather than interactively prompt if credentials are missing.
  • [Feature] #336: When a client certificate is indicated, all password processing is disabled.
  • [Bug] #332: More robust handling of server response in --skip-existing

2.0.0 2019-09-24

  • [Feature] #437: Twine now requires Python 3.6 or later. Use pip 9 or pin to “twine<2” to install twine on older Python versions.
  • [Bug] #491: Require requests 2.20 or later to avoid reported security vulnerabilities in earlier releases.

1.15.0 2019-09-17

  • [Feature] #488: Improved output on check command: Prints a message when there are no distributions given to check. Improved handling of errors in a distribution’s markup, avoiding messages flowing through to the next distribution’s errors.

1.14.0 2019-09-06

  • [Feature] #310: Now provide a more meaningful error on redirect during upload.
  • [Feature] #459: Show Warehouse URL after uploading a package
  • [Feature] #456: Better error handling and gpg2 fallback if gpg not available.
  • [Bug] #341: Fail more gracefully when encountering bad metadata

1.13.0 2019-02-13

  • [Feature] #416: Add Python 3.7 to classifiers.
  • [Feature] #418: Support keyring.get_username_and_password.
  • [Feature] #419: Support keyring.get_credential.
  • [Feature] #426: Allow defining an empty username and password in .pypirc.
  • [Feature] #427: Add disable_progress_bar option to disable tqdm.
  • [Bug] #408: Fix keyring support.
  • [Bug] #412: Don’t crash if there’s no package description.
  • [Bug] #421: Remove unnecessary usage of readme_render.markdown.
  • [Bug] #428: Fix –skip-existing for Nexus Repos.
  • [Bug] #432: Use https URLs everywhere.
  • [Bug] #435: Specify python_requires in setup.py
  • [Bug] #436: Use modern Python language features.
  • [Bug] #444: Use io.StringIO instead of StringIO.
  • [Bug] #441: Only install pyblake2 if needed.
  • [Bug] #447: Avoid requests-toolbelt to 0.9.0 to prevent attempting to use openssl when it isn’t available.
  • [Bug] #452: Restore prompts while retaining support for suppressing prompts.
  • [Support] #439: Refactor tox env and travis config.

1.12.1 2018-09-24

  • [Bug] #404: Fix regression with upload exit code

1.12.0 2018-09-24

  • [Feature] #363: Empower --skip-existing for Artifactory repositories
  • [Feature] #392: Drop support for Python 3.3
  • [Feature] #395: Add twine check command to check long description
  • [Bug] #367: Avoid MD5 when Python is compiled in FIPS mode

1.11.0 2018-03-19

  • [Feature] #319: Support Metadata 2.1 (PEP 566), including Markdown for description fields.
  • [Feature] #320: Remove PyPI as default register package index.
  • [Bug] #322: Raise exception if attempting upload to deprecated legacy PyPI URLs.
  • [Bug] #269: Avoid uploading to PyPI when given alternate repository URL, and require http:// or https:// in repository_url.
  • [Support] #318: Update PyPI URLs.
  • [Support] #314: Add new maintainer, release checklists.
  • [Support] #277: Add instructions on how to use keyring.

1.10.0 2018-03-07

  • [Feature] #256: Improve progressbar
  • [Feature] #257: Declare support for Python 3.6
  • [Feature] #303: Revise docs predicting future of twine
  • [Feature] #296: Add architecture overview to docs
  • [Feature] #295: Add doc building instructions
  • [Feature] #46: Link to changelog from README
  • [Feature] #304: Reorganize & improve user & developer documentation.
  • [Bug] #265: Fix --repository[-url] help text
  • [Bug] #268: Print progress to stdout, not stderr
  • [Bug] #297: Fix Read the Docs, tox, Travis configuration
  • [Bug] #286: Fix Travis CI and test configuration
  • [Bug] #200: Remove obsolete registration guidance
  • [Bug] #299: Fix changelog formatting
  • [Bug] #298: Fix syntax highlighting in README
  • [Bug] #315: Degrade gracefully when keyring is unavailable

1.9.1 2017-05-27

  • [Bug]: Blacklist known bad versions of Requests. See also [Bug] #253:

1.9.0 2017-05-22

  • [Support]: Check if a package exists if the URL is one of:

    • https://pypi.python.org/pypi/
    • https://upload.pypi.org/
    • https://upload.pypi.io/

    This helps people with https://upload.pypi.io still in their .pypirc file.

  • [Support]: Fix precedence of --repository-url over --repository. See also [Bug] #206:

  • [Support]: Fix --skip-existing when used to upload a package for the first time. See also [Bug] #220:

  • [Support]: Twine sends less information about the user’s system in the User-Agent string. See also [Bug] #229:

  • [Support]: Twine will use hashlib.blake2b on Python 3.6+ instead of using pyblake2 for Blake2 hashes 256 bit hashes.

  • [Support]: Twine will now resolve passwords using the keyring if available. Module can be required with the keyring extra.

1.8.0 2016-08-08

  • [Feature] #171: Generate Blake2b 256 digests for packages if pyblake2 is installed. Users can use python -m pip install twine[with-blake2] to have pyblake2 installed with Twine.

  • [Feature] #166: Allow the Repository URL to be provided on the command-line (--repository-url) or via an environment variable (TWINE_REPOSITORY_URL).

  • [Feature] #144: Retrieve configuration from the environment as a default.

    • Repository URL will default to TWINE_REPOSITORY
    • Username will default to TWINE_USERNAME
    • Password will default to TWINE_PASSWORD

  • [Feature] #201: Switch from upload.pypi.io to upload.pypi.org.

  • [Support]: Do not generate traffic to Legacy PyPI unless we’re uploading to it or uploading to Warehouse (e.g., pypi.io). This avoids the attempt to upload a package to the index if we can find it on Legacy PyPI already.

  • [Support]: Warn users if they receive a 500 error when uploading to *pypi.python.org

  • [Support]: Stop testing on Python 2.6. 2.6 support will be “best effort” until 2.0.0

  • [Support]: Generate SHA256 digest for all packages by default.

1.7.4 2016-07-09

  • [Bug]: Correct a packaging error.

1.7.3 2016-07-08

  • [Bug] #195: Fix uploads to instances of pypiserver using --skip-existing. We were not properly checking the return status code on the response after attempting an upload.

1.7.2 2016-07-05

  • [Bug] #189:, [Bug] #191: Fix issue where we were checking the existence of packages even if the user didn’t specify --skip-existing.

1.7.1 2016-07-05

  • [Bug] #187: Clint was not specified in the wheel metadata as a dependency.

1.7.0 2016-07-04

  • [Feature] #177: Switch Twine to upload to pypi.io instead of pypi.python.org.
  • [Feature] #167: Implement retries when the CDN in front of PyPI gives us a 5xx error.
  • [Feature] #162: Allow --skip-existing to work for 409 status codes.
  • [Feature] #152: Add progress bar to uploads.
  • [Feature] #142: Support --cert and --client-cert command-line flags and config file options for feature parity with pip. This allows users to verify connections to servers other than PyPI (e.g., local package repositories) with different certificates.
  • [Bug] #186: Allow passwords to have %s in them.

1.6.5 2015-12-16

  • [Bug] #155: Bump requests-toolbelt version to ensure we avoid ConnectionErrors

1.6.4 2015-10-27

  • [Bug] #146: Exception while accessing the repository key (sic) when raising a redirect exception.
  • [Bug] #145: Paths with hyphens in them break the Wheel regular expression.

1.6.3 2015-10-05

  • [Bug] #137:, [Bug] #140: Uploading signatures was broken due to the pull request that added large file support via requests-toolbelt. This caused a 500 error on PyPI and prevented package and signature upload in twine 1.6.0

1.6.2 2015-09-28

  • [Bug] #132: Upload signatures with packages appropriately

    As part of the refactor for the 1.6.0 release, we were using the wrong name to find the signature file.

    This also uncovered a bug where if you’re using twine in a situation where * is not expanded by your shell, we might also miss uploading signatures to PyPI. Both were fixed as part of this.

1.6.1 2015-09-18

  • [Bug] #130: Fix signing support for uploads

1.6.0 2015-09-14

  • [Feature] #8: Support registering new packages with twine register
  • [Feature] #115: Add the --skip-existing flag to twine upload to allow users to skip releases that already exist on PyPI.
  • [Feature] #97: Allow the user to specify the location of their .pypirc
  • [Feature] #104: Large file support via the requests-toolbelt
  • [Feature] #106: Upload wheels first to PyPI
  • [Bug] #111: Provide more helpful messages if .pypirc is out of date.
  • [Bug] #116: Work around problems with Windows when using getpass.getpass
  • [Bug] #114: Warnings triggered by pkginfo searching for PKG-INFO files should no longer be user visible.
  • [Bug] #92: Raise an exception on redirects

1.5.0 2015-03-10

  • [Feature] #29: Support commands not named “gpg” for signing
  • [Bug] #61: Support deprecated pypirc file format
  • [Bug] #85: Display information about the version of setuptools installed
  • [Support]: Add lower-limit to requests dependency

1.4.0 2014-12-12

  • [Feature] #6: Switch to a git style dispatching for the commands to enable simpler commands and programmatic invocation.
  • [Feature] #13: Parse ~/.pypirc ourselves and use subprocess instead of the distutils.spawn module.
  • [Bug] #65: Expand globs and check for existence of dists to upload
  • [Bug] #26: Add support for uploading Windows installers
  • [Bug] #47: Fix issue uploading packages with _s in the name
  • [Bug] #32: Use pkg_resources to load registered commands
  • [Bug] #34: List registered commands in help text
  • [Bug] #28: Prevent ResourceWarning from being shown

1.3.0 2014-03-31

  • [Feature]: Additional functionality.

1.2.2 2013-10-03

  • [Feature]: Basic functionality.