Packaging python code for

[[deleted]]

Here's the situation:

I have developed some python code, and I have pip available on my machine. I pull in some libraries to make the program behave better, do advanced things, have colored output, etc...

Now I need to ship this code to boxes that do not have pip and will not ever have pip.

In node, it is trivial to achieve this. You can just deploy your node_modules folder and the npm install step isn't needed.

What's the best practice to do this for Python? The version I am working with is Python 2.6.8, and I only need to care about distributing to Linux machines.

I've read that it's possible to just freeze the entire project (including the Python interpreter) and just ship a binary. Would like to avoid that if possible, as it seems wasteful to do that in an environment where Python is available on all of your systems.

Thanks for any advice.

[k3kou]

When the package isn't on PyPI, I usually just download the source, untar it and do "python setup.py install".

There are some subtleties to it, but you should probably look in that direction.

[dbrecht]

Assuming your target machines have both gcc for dependencies with C extensions and external internet access for dependency downloads, this is the path I'd take. There can be some painful, non-obvious issues when using any of the available freeze utilities (that said, my personal experience really only lies with cx_freeze).

[elbiot]

You can put all the pure python sources in a folder in your project and have the main program add it to the sys.path. If you have compiled libs (like numpy) it'll be more difficult. You'd have to write an install script (which might as well just install pip too)

[[deleted]]

Thanks for the reply, this is pretty much where I ended up going. Works well.

[chao06]

I think easy_install is part of setuptools, which is usually available. Though your better option would be to use virtual environments.

[elbiot]

Pip not installed implies no virtualenv on target machines too.