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Showing content from https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2007-July/073838.html below:

[Python-Dev] Add a -z interpreter flag to execute a zip file

[Python-Dev] Add a -z interpreter flag to execute a zip fileThomas Wouters thomas at python.org
Thu Jul 12 10:37:58 CEST 2007
On 7/12/07, "Martin v. Löwis" <martin at v.loewis.de> wrote:
>
> > Right, but it's supposed to be cross platform, as mentioned in the
> > patch.  This will work on Windows.
>
> But in the description, you said that you do the same on Windows
> by making a file that is both a zip file and a batch file. So my
> approach is also cross-platform, no?


The approach is cross-platform, in that you can use the approach on
different platforms. The result of the approach, however, is not
cross-platform. You can't distribute your single zip-as-executable to both
Windows and bourne-shell-using platforms. The -z argument does allow that.

Why is the shell script not robust?


There are a lot of subtleties in figuring out which python to execute,
environment variables that you may or may not want to tweak (admittedly
Google's solution that Andy referenced is more vulnerable to that, but it's
not unique to Google by any means.) If you want any kind of flexibility in
the packaged-up program, you need a bunch of logic in the shell script, and
environment-tricks to pass information to the python process, start the
python process and provide a bunch more logic in Python to boot. For
instance, you need to set PYTHONPATH to include the zipfile before you can
import from it, but you don't want that PYTHONPATH to be passed to
subprocesses by accident.

The -z argument makes it extremely simple: the user decides which python to
run, and the program is run directly just like it would if it was unpacked
and run that way.  It makes it extremely easy to create 'single executables'
out of multiple Python files, in the form that single .py files already are.
It leaves building a more complex system (such as eggs) ontop of it entirely
open. The change is a good thing, IMHO. And I say this not because we use a
similar solution at Google -- we already solved it, and we won't be using
the -z argument anytime soon anyway. I say this because I've had many
requests from non-googlers for something exactly like this :)

"" should not be removed from sys.path. It is *not* meant to be
> the current directory, but the directory where the main script
> lives.


Yes. "" should either be interpreted as the zipfile, or be replaced by the
zipfile. In the case of executing the zipfile, the main script lives *in the
zipfile*.

It's baggage that is rarely needed, and the feature can be readily
> implemented in a different way for people who need it.


I disagree with both statements. The bagage is much less than zipimport
itself, which has proven to be quite useful. Nevertheless, zipimport built
into the interpreter was by no means necessary; current users of it could
have readily implemented it themselves, with no changes to Python. (In fact,
Google's 'autopar' tool does exactly that to support Python 2.2, which lacks
zipimport.) This is a very small, logical and useful extension to zipimport,
and I believe you will find more uses for it than you expect (although I do
believe you yourself don't have a need for it. I just don't think you're a
typical Python programmer in this case :)

-- 
Thomas Wouters <thomas at python.org>

Hi! I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file to help me
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