How to Create an Executable Zip File

Python has the ability to execute a zip file that contains Python files. This makes it very handy to create an executable zip file. Here's an example how to do it.

test.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

def say_something(): print "Hello World"
def main(): say_something()

__main__.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

import test

if __name__ == "__main__": test.main()

The __main__.py must be in the root directory of the zip file.

Zip all the Python files so that it looks like below. We don't need to use .zip extension, we can name it anything we want.

test.zip
|-- __main__.py
`-- test.py

To execute it:

python test.zip

and you will see the output as

Hello World