RECOMMENDED THIRD PARTY TOOLS CHAPTER ONE This guide only covers the basic tools for creating extensions provided as part of this version of CPython. Third party tools like Cython, cffi, SWIG and Numba offer both simpler and more sophisticated approaches to creating C and C++ extensions for Python. See also: Python Packaging User Guide: Binary Extensions The Python Packaging User Guide not only covers several available tools that simplify the creation of binary extensions, but also discusses the various reasons why creating an extension module may be desirable in the first place. 3