On 14 August 2013 13:57, PJ Eby <pje@telecommunity.com> wrote:

> Thoughts?

Writing the script.py file means the current user needs write access
to a program installation directory, which is probably not a good
idea. Also, what if two instances are running, or you overwrite an
existing script while it's being read by Python in another process?

Good point.

No, if you're taking the embedding route, it's got to be either a
zipfile, or else you have to use -c and give Python an offset to seek
to in the file.

Again, agreed - we have executable zipfiles for Python, and a combined exe/zipfile is a perfectly viable format (it's used by most self-extracting zip formats, as well as wininst formats).

In any case, it'd probably be a good idea to offer some command line
tools for manipulating such .exes, to e.g. show/change what Python
it's set to use, extract/dump/replace the zip, etc.

I'd say tools supporting the format are essential. exe/zip formats will never be as user friendly as a pure text file script - we need to make the extra effort as minimal as possible. In particular, see my other post - I don't want to have one format (exe) for installed commands packaged with setuptools, and a separate format for one-file scripts I write myself.

Actually, this sounds like a very good solution.

Paul