PyRun - Shipping the Python 3.7 runtime in just 4.8MB

How to put Python on a diet without losing functionality

Marc-Andre Lemburg

CPython Development Linux Tooling Use Case

See in schedule

Python has become the defacto standard tool for many people to write tools, command scripts, smaller applications and even large applications.

On Windows, it is fairly easy to build application bundles using e.g. py2exe, but on Unix, the situation is less obvious, unless you want to rely on OS specific Python distributions, which often require severall 100MB with of installation on the system and are usually customized in distribution specific ways.

Instead of relying on OS installed Python distributions on Unix, our open-source eGenix PyRun provides a more or less complete Python runtime (interpreter and stdlib modules) in a single file, which can be "installed" by simply copying the binary to the destination system. The file can be as small as 4.8MB for Python 3.7, by using compressors such as upx.

Due to its size, it's also the perfect Python distribution for Docker containers.

The talk will show how PyRun works, is built, how to customize it to include additional modules and applications.

Type: Talk (30 mins); Python level: Intermediate; Domain level: Intermediate


Marc-Andre Lemburg

eGenix.com Software GmbH

Marc-Andre is the CEO and founder of eGenix.com, a Python-focused project and consulting company based in Germany. He has a degree in mathematics from the University of Düsseldorf.

His work with and for Python started in 1994. In 1997, he became a Python Core Developer. He designed and implemented the Unicode support in Python and continued to maintain the Python Unicode implementation for more than a decade, after it first appeared in Python 2.0. He also authored the well-known mx Extensions, e.g. mxTextTools, mxDateTime and mxODBC, which are now distributed and maintained through eGenix.com.

Marc-Andre currently is Chair of the EuroPython Society (EPS) which organizes the EuroPython conference series and support the Python community in Europe.

He is also a founding member and Fellow of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and has served on the PSF Board several times.

Today, Marc-Andre spends most of his time consulting and managing large-scale customer projects heavily relying on Python and databases. More details are available on http://www.malemburg.com/.