[Python-Dev] Single-file Python executables (was: Computed Goto dispatch for Python 2)

[Paul Moore]

On 28 May 2015 at 19:22, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Unfortunately (and believe me, I've been down this road many times) on
>> Windows *only* the exe format is a "first-class" executable.
>> Executable scripts and shebangs are very useful, but there are always
>> corner cases where they don't work *quite* like an exe. On Windows,
>> you have to be prepared to ship an exe if you want to compete with
>> languages that generate exes.
>
> I'm aware of that. When I said "a tiny stub", I was thinking in terms
> of a small executable. The idea is that its sole purpose is to locate
> Python someplace else, and chain to it; that has to be actual
> executable code, complete with the 512-byte "MZ" header and
> everything, to ensure compatibility. But it should be able to be
> small, tight, and easy to verify correctness of, so there aren't (in
> theory!) security exploits in the header itself.

OK, cool. I'm sort of working on that as a bit of a side project - a
tiny stub exe that you can prepend to a Python zipapp which runs it
via the standard embedding APIs. It's little more than an idea at the
moment, but I don't think it'll be too hard to implement...

Paul