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Pex: A tool for generating .pex (Python EXecutable) files, lock files and venvs

138

I used python to write a small utility that i wanted to share with a coworker, ended up having to rewrite it in Go because i spent 3 hours trying to compile the python version to an exe so that it was easier to run on their machine.

I wonder why isn't there an easy way to just package the interpreter inside an EXE for people that don't care about binary size just so that it would make it seamless to package up utilities written in python.

7 days agoby glass-z13

I'm always on the lookout for ways of packaging Python programs/script-piles into single-file executables, so thank you for posting this!

The GitHub README says it builds on the Python .ZIP App format (PEP441), which in turns says you can put your app in a .ZIP file and Python will run it as an app.

I think I went this route with PyInstaller's one-file output option. But I found it to be too slow because (1) my app was a CLI app and I needed it to start, run, and end quickly, (2) I imported something from Django because it was useful (which ballooned the size), and (3) the single-file .ZIP needed to be extracted into a temporary directory, run, and then deleted every time (!!!).

Does anyone know how Pex / PEP441 deals with this? Is the extract-run-delete thing normal/standard? Is there a way to cache the extracted app?

7 days agoby MikeTheGreat

I think the easiest way to do this now is with uv and their support for inline metadata. At this point you can just have the user install uv with a single command and then have the user run the script with `uv run example.py`.

7 days agoby serjester

I know it's not very nice to post that here, but given it's hard to get good info about python because the ecosystem is so huge, I'd rather give it straight:

Don't use pex, use shiv: https://shiv.readthedocs.io/

Pex doesn't work on windows, is slower than shiv and shiv solves the resource files problem that you will encounter with dependencies like django. To achieve this, shiv unzips the whole zipapp in a cache on disk and create a transparent proxy to it.

Still, I wish zipapps had better tooling honestly. Using either pex or shiv is more complex than it needs to be.

I hope uv will eventually give you something like "uv zipapp" and make it good and simple.

Right now, to bundle all deps for shiv you have to download first all wheels, then figure out the proper incantation to include them. And if you use WSGI, you probably want some kind of dedicated entry point.

The tech is cool, but it deserves maturing to be a true ".war for python".

7 days agoby BiteCode_dev

Pex and Shiv both require the end user to have Python installed, so I think PyOxidizer is the best tool in this category: https://pyoxidizer.readthedocs.io/en/stable/pyoxidizer_compa...

7 days agoby mappu

I can see how .pex or shiv's zippaps live at the Pareto threshold where converting a Python app to an 80% (or less...) executable takes only 20% (or less!) of the effort that would be spent re-writing the app in eg C, C++, Rust, or Golang. Still, it breaks my heart to see all this work being done to keep developers employed as "Python developers", instead of leveling them up to a broader programming skillset. It seems as if the industry is investing rather heavily in a local maximum.

But, of course, the market is has information that I don't.

7 days agoby gavmor

We've been using pex for a long while to package PySpark jobs with dependencies into a single file. Saves a ton of time vs. the old way of building/deploying docker images.

https://spark.apache.org/docs/latest/api/python/user_guide/p...

7 days agoby khaledh

We have been using pex to deploy code to running docker containers in ECS to avoid the cold start delay. Cuts down the iteration loop time for development significantly.

https://dagster.io/blog/fast-deploys-with-pex-and-docker