How to package CLI tools in pex

[rpdelaney]

For instance, this toy project dumbpw. I define the entrypoint in pyproject.toml:

[tool.poetry.scripts]
dumbpw = "dumbpw.cli:cli"

However, if I run a pex archive, I get a python interpreter and not the dumbpw cli interface.

How might I do this with pex?

[jsirois]

The -c / --script option can be used to set the PEX entry point to a console script at build time (use PEX_SCRIPT=dumbpw my.pex to change this at runtime). So, for example, in the root of your repo run:

pex . -c dumbpw -o my.pex

In general there is a lot of reading to do in pex --help.

[jsirois]

Yeah, I just tried and this works fine:

pex --interpreter-constraint ">=3.10,<4" --pip-version latest . -c dumbpw -o my.pex
./my.pex --version

[rpdelaney]

The second one did it. Thank you! I can't believe I haven't heard of pex until now; this cleanly solves the problem of distributing python scripts with cli interfaces doesn't it? Amazing stuff, thanks so much !!

[jsirois]

Not really. Pex doesn't support Windows yet, and a PEX does not include an interpreter. You need https://github.com/a-scie for that (for example). Maybe check out https://github.com/a-scie/lift which uses shiv (Pex alternative) + itself to ship itself as a single file native binary.

[rpdelaney]

Fair enough; it doesn't cover all use cases, but those are use cases I don't have :) I think my point is just that I'm so glad I found this, and grateful to you and everyone else maintaining it.