title: How can I use third party 'libraries' in python?
body: <p><strong>Disclaimer</strong>: This is a very basic question, but keep in mind I come from a Microsoft background, and I've programmed mostly in .NET with Visual Studio (this may help you help me with analogies perhaps)</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>I started programming a little python for the fun of it, so I downloaded <a href="http://www.eclipse.org/" rel="nofollow">eclipse</a>, and installed <a href="http://pydev.org/" rel="nofollow">PyDev</a>.</p>
  
  <p>I reached a point where I needed to parse a date, and I found an alternive to <a href="http://docs.python.org/library/time.html#time.strptime" rel="nofollow">time.strptime</a> that seemed interesting. That alternative was <a href="http://labix.org/python-dateutil" rel="nofollow">python-dateutil</a>.</p>
  
  <p>I went ahead and downloaded it, but I had problems when I tried to use it.<br>
  Apparently <a href="http://labix.org/python-dateutil#head-2f49784d6b27bae60cde1cff6a535663cf87497b" rel="nofollow">the download</a> includes source files, and I had absolutely no idea how to use it in my "project" in eclipse.</p>
  
  <p>So my very basic questions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Do I need to include the source files directly with my files? Perhaps in a subdirectory? How would I use it in my code (how do I <em>import</em> them in my .py file)?</li>
  <li>Do I need to "build" (make?) them and reference them? How? How do you "compile" something like that in windows?</li>
  <li>Am I totally missing some important point?</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Thank you for your patience.</p>