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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.
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You can use a tool like PyInstaller to convert your script (. py file) into an executable (.exe on windows). The way that works is PyInstaller copies both the python interpretor and your script into a single file so that you can distribuite your program easily.
To deploy, you need to upload this artifact to your production machine. To install it, just run dpkg -i my-package. deb . Your virtualenv will be placed at /usr/share/python/ and any script files defined in your setup.py will be available in the accompanying bin directory.
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.
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