Project Layout

Maturin expects a particular project layout depending on the contents of the package.

Pure Rust project

For a pure Rust project, the structure is as expected and what you get from cargo new:

my-rust-project/
├── Cargo.toml
├── pyproject.toml  # required for maturin configuration
└── src
    ├── lib.rs  # default for library crates
    └── main.rs  # default for binary crates

Maturin will add a necessary __init__.py to the package when building the wheel. For convenience, this file includes the following:

from .my_project import *

__doc__ = my_project.__doc__
if hasattr(my_project, "__all__"):
    __all__ = my_project.__all__

such that the module functions may be called directly with:

import my_project
my_project.foo()

rather than:

from my_project import my_project

Note: there is currently no way to tell maturin to include extra data (e.g. package_data in setuptools) for a pure Rust project. Instead, consider using the layout described below for the mixed Rust/Python project.

Mixed Rust/Python project

To create a mixed Rust/Python project, add a directory with your package name (i.e. matching lib.name in your Cargo.toml) to contain the Python source:

my-rust-and-python-project
├── Cargo.toml
├── my_project  # <<< add this directory and put Python code in here
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── bar.py
├── pyproject.toml
├── Readme.md
└── src
    └── lib.rs

Note that in a mixed Rust/Python project, maturin does not modify the existing __init__.py in the root package, so now to import the rust module in Python you must use:

from my_project import my_project

You can modify __init__.py yourself (see above) if you would like to import functions Rust functions from a higher-level namespace.

Alternate Python source directory (src layout)

Having a directory with package_name in the root of the project can occasionally cause confusion as Python allows importing local packages and modules. A popular way to avoid this is with the src-layout, where the Python package is nested within a src directory. Unfortunately this interferes with the structure of a typical Rust project. Fortunately, Python is nor particular about the name of the parent source directory. You tell maturin to use a different Python source directory in Cargo.toml by setting package.metadata.maturin.python-source. For example:

[package.metadata.maturin]
python-source = "python"

then the project structure would look like this:

my-rust-and-python-project
├── Cargo.toml
├── python
│   └── my_project
│       ├── __init__.py
│       └── bar.py
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
└── src
    └── lib.rs

Adding Python type information

To distribute typing information, you need to add:

an empty marker file called py.typed in the root of the Python package
inline types in Python files and/or .pyi "stub" files

In a pure Rust project, add type stubs in a <module_name>.pyi file in the project root. Maturin will automatically include this file along with the required py.typed file for you.

my-rust-project/
├── Cargo.toml
├── my_project.pyi  # <<< add type stubs for Rust functions in the my_project module here
├── pyproject.toml
└── src
    └── lib.rs

In a mixed Rust/Python project, additional files in the Python source dir (but not in .gitignore) will be automatically included in the build outputs (source distribution and/or wheel). Type information can be therefore added to the root Python package directory as you might do in a pure Python package. This requires you to add the py.typed marker file yourself.

my-project
├── Cargo.toml
├── python
│   └── my_project
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── py.typed  # <<< add this empty file
│       ├── my_project.pyi  # <<< add type stubs for Rust functions in the my_project module here
│       ├── bar.pyi  # <<< add type stubs for bar.py here OR type bar.py inline
│       └── bar.py
├── pyproject.toml
├── README.md
└── src
    └── lib.rs

Data

You can add wheel data by creating a <module_name>.data folder or setting its location as data in pyproject.toml under [tool.maturin] or in Cargo.toml under [project.metadata.maturin].

The data folder may have the following subfolder:

data: The contents of this folder will simply be unpacked into the virtualenv
scripts: Treated similar to entry points, files in there are installed as standalone executable
headers: For .h C header files
purelib: This also exists, but seems to be barely used
platlib: This also exists, but seems to be barely used

If you add a symlink in the data directory, we'll include the actual file so you more flexibility

Maturin User Guide