Créer un executable egg
=======================

Problem
~~~~~~~

In Java, you can distribute your project in JAR format. It is essentially a ZIP file with some metadata. The project can be launched easily:

::

    $ java -jar project.jar

What is its Python equivalent? How to distribute a Python project (with several modules and packages) in a single file?

Solution
~~~~~~~~

The following is based on this post, written by bheklilr. Thanks for the tip.

Let’s see the following project structure:

::


    MyApp/
        MyApp.py          <--- Main script
        alibrary/
            __init__.py
            alibrary.py
            errors.py
        anotherlib/
            __init__.py
            another.py
            errors.py
        configs/
            config.json
            logging.json

Rename the main script to __main__.py and compress the project to a zip file. The extension can be .egg:

::

    myapp.egg/             <--- technically, it's just a zip file
        __main__.py        <--- Renamed from MyApp.py
        alibrary/
            __init__.py
            alibrary.py
            errors.py
        anotherlib/
            __init__.py
            another.py
            errors.py
        configs/
            config.json
            logging.json

How to zip it? Enter the project directory (MyApp/) and use this command:

::

    zip -r ../myapp.egg .

Now you can launch the .egg file just like you launch a Java .jar file:

::

    $ python myapp.egg

You can also use command-line arguments that are passed to __main__.py.