How trasform a python program .py in an executable program in Ubuntu ?

Question

I have a simple python program .py and I want an executable version ( for UBUNTU LINUX ) of this program and avoid to run it by terminal with "python myprogram.py". How can I do that ?

Answer 1

You can try using a module like cxfreeze

Answer 2

At the top op your python program add:

#!/usr/bin/python

Answer 3

Add the following at the top of your program:

#!/usr/bin/env python

The above line specifies that your program should be executed by invoking the Python interpreter with a clean environment (that's what /usr/bin/env does). After that, make the program executable from the command line for all users:

$ chmod a+x your_program.py

Note that this does not make your program to be able to run without the Python interpreter, i.e. you cannot copy it to another computer where the Python interpreter is not installed.

Answer 4

There is no need to. You can mark the file as executable using

chmod +x filename

Make sure it has a shebang line in the first line:

#!/usr/bin/env python

And your linux should be able to understand that this file must be interpreted with python. It can then be 'executed' as

./myprogram.py

Answer 5

As various others have already pointed out you can add the shebang to the top of your file

#!/usr/bin/python or #!/usr/bin/env python

and add execution permissions chmod +x program.py

allowing you to run your module with ./program.py

Another option is to install it the pythonic way with setuptools. Create yourself a setup.py and put this in it:

from setuptools import setup

setup(
    name = 'Program',
    version = '0.1',
    description = 'An example of an installable program',
    author = 'ghickman',
    url = '',
    license = 'MIT',
    packages = ['program'],
    entry_points = {'console_scripts': ['prog = program.program',],},
)

This assumes you've got a package called program and within that, a file called program.py with a method called main(). To install this way run setup.py like this

python setup.py install

This will install it to your platforms site-packages directory and create a console script called prog. You can then run prog from your terminal.

A good resource for more information on setup.py is this site: http://mxm-mad-science.blogspot.com/2008/02/python-eggs-simple-introduction.html