How to package/ distribute python applications

Question

I've spent countless hours trying to understand this and unfortunately I haven't gotten to an answer yet. Or at least I don't think I have. First up I should say that I am a Java Developer. I've only recently started working with Python and the build-process is a bit...odd for me.

In my mind I write an application, I compile it to run and I package it into a .jar for other people to use. Either as a library or for end-users to execute and have fun with it. (ignoring stuff like maven or gradle...)

I wrote a little CLT in python that consists of ~6 files and I wanted to distribute it. From what I could find I was supposed to write a setup.py and I found some guides on how to do that but ... to be honest I'm not even sure what that did. I could get my source code bundled into a tar.gz with some other meta data or it would create some weird files that I don't know what to do with.

Then I found PyInstaller and it worked great to package everything into a binary. However I've run into some problems trying to create a Debian package and it has made me re-assess and question the fact that there doesn't seem to be something in Python (without having to use an external tool) that lets me package/ bundle/ whatever my application into a single file to be run.

And that's something I can't get my head around. I mean...before there were tools like PyInstaller and P2Exe and what not, how did people distribute their applications? Am I expected to write a C application, somehow include the python code in there and compile that? Sorry if this seems like a stupid question but I'm really asking. I've googled around so much and spent so much time on it and haven't found a satisfactory answer so I hope someone here can help me with this! Thanks.

Answer 1

If you package your Python code for pip , you can include some executable scripts that start your program. I don't know how the situation was 5 years ago when this question got asked, but nowadays pip is pretty much integrated with Python, to the point that there's a standard library module to bootstrap pip in case it's missing: https://docs.python.org/3/library/ensurepip.html

The situation is different if you want to package an application for some other package manager, like Anaconda or the package managers of various Linux distributions, or as a Windows installer. Obviously, you'll have to create a separate package for each package manager or installation technique you want to support.