A little known feature of Python: you can wrap your Python application in a zip file and distribute it as a single file. The trick to make it runnable is to put your main function inside a file called __main__.py

inside the zip file.

Example:

$ cat __main__.py print("Hello World!!!") $ zip appl __main__.py adding: __main__.py (stored 0%) $ rm __main__.py $ python appl.zip Hello World!!!

On Linux, you can even hack the zip file to include a shebang line!

$ cat appl !/usr/bin/env python This is a Python application stored in a ZIP archive. $ cat appl.zip >> appl $ chmod u+x appl $ ./appl Hello World!!!

It's not quite self-contained, as you still need to have Python installed, but otherwise it's a good way to distribute a Python application as a single file that users can just copy and run.