Python tool for incorporating imported items

Question

Is there a tool in python to rewrite some code which imports things such that it no longer has to import anything?

Take a library that draws a box called box.py

def box(text='Hello, World!')
    draw the box magic
    return

Now in another program (we'll call it warning.py) it says:

from box import box

box('Warning, water found in hard drive')

Is there a tool that I can use that will see it importing the box function (or a class for that matter) from box and insert that function (or class, or even variable definitions) into the warning.py script removing the import line (thus making it more portable)?

With thanks, Narnie

Answer 1

It sounds like you're wanting to effectively copy-paste everything into one file to be able to distribute a single file instead of several?

In that case, look into using a zipped module instead of copy-pasting everything into one file... This is far more maintainable in the long run.

Python will execute a zip file if there's a __main__.py file inside of it.

E.g.:

echo "def foo(): print 'code inside a.py'" > a.py
echo "def bar(): print 'code inside b.py'" > b.py
echo "import a; import b; a.foo(); b.bar()" > __main__.py
zip test.zip a.py b.py __main__.py
rm a.py b.py __main__.py

python test.zip

This creates a zip file with 3 python files inside of it. It can be executed with python test.zip. Everything is completely self-contained. (I believe this requires python >= 2.6, by the way...)

Answer 2

If you're trying to make your scripts easier to distribute, this isn't the right way to go about doing it. For windows, look into py2exe which will convert all your files into one executable file. For linux, the preferred method is to use a package which the user's package manager will install. If you have your distutils bits properly set up, it should not be difficult at all to create a package for your software.