Python 2.6 and beyond has the ability to directly execute a .zip file if the zip file contains a __main__.py file at the top of the zip archive. I'm wanting to leverage this feature to provide preview releases of a tool I'm developing that won't require users to install anything beyond copying the .zip file to their disk. Is there a standard way to create such a zip file? I'm looking for a solution that works with python 2.6 and python 2.7.

Ideally I would like to use distutils, since I already have it working when I want to do a normal install. Is there a canonical way to use (or extend) distutils to create such a .zip file?

distutils provides an sdist command which creates a source distribution that is almost right, but creates a structure that is a little too deep.

For example, my source tree looks like this:

my_package/- setup.py- src/- __main__.py- module1/- module2/- module3/

When I do python setup.py sdist I end up with a .zip file with the following structure:

my_package-0.1.zip- my_package-0.1/- README.txt- PKG_INFO- src/- __main__.py- module1/- module2/- module3/

This isn't executable because __main__.py is not at the top of the distribution. Effectively what I want is a src distribution that doesn't include src, but only the files under src. That, or exactly what sdist gives me, but with an extra __main__.py at the top of the archive.

Updated: Since the setup.cfg is global, it affects the 'install-lib' setting for all commands, which is not what is desired. Unfortunately there is no way (to my knowledge) to pass a options to a subcommand via the command line, e.g. if you specify bdist --install-lib=/ it will raise an error instead of passing that down to the subcommands.

To customize the install-lib for the install subcommand only when bdist is run, you can subclass the bdist_dumb command and set the path manually after the install subcommand is constructed / reinitialized:

setup.py

from distutils.core import setup
from distutils.command.bdist_dumb import bdist_dumbclass custom_bdist_dumb(bdist_dumb):def reinitialize_command(self, name, **kw):cmd = bdist_dumb.reinitialize_command(self, name, **kw)if name == 'install':cmd.install_lib = '/'return cmdif __name__ == '__main__':setup(# our custom class overridecmdclass = {'bdist_dumb': custom_bdist_dumb},name='my_package',py_modules = ['__main__'],packages = ['module1', 'module2'],package_dir = {'': 'src'})

Running:

% python setup.py bdist --format=zip
% unzip -l dist/my_package-0.0.0.linux-x86_64.zip
Archive:  dist/my_package-0.0.0.linux-x86_64.zipLength      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----184  2011-05-31 20:34   my_package-0.0.0.egg-info30  2011-05-31 20:34   __main__.py128  2011-05-31 20:34   __main__.pyc107  2011-05-31 20:34   module1/__init__.pyc0  2011-05-31 20:27   module1/__init__.py107  2011-05-31 20:34   module2/__init__.pyc0  2011-05-31 20:27   module2/__init__.py
---------                     -------556                     7 files% python dist/my_package-0.0.0.linux-x86_64.zip
my_package working.