Compiling python code

Compiling Python Code would be a good place to start:

Python source code is automatically compiled into Python byte code by the CPython interpreter. Compiled code is usually stored in PYC (or PYO) files, and is regenerated when the source is updated, or when otherwise necessary.

To distribute a program to people who already have Python installed, you can ship either the PY files or the PYC files. In recent versions, you can also create a ZIP archive containing PY or PYC files, and use a small “bootstrap script” to add that ZIP archive to the path.

To “compile” a Python program into an executable, use a bundling tool, such as Gordon McMillan’s installer (alternative download) (cross-platform), Thomas Heller’s py2exe (Windows), Anthony Tuininga’s cx_Freeze (cross-platform), or Bob Ippolito’s py2app (Mac). These tools puts your modules and data files in some kind of archive file, and creates an executable that automatically sets things up so that modules are imported from that archive. Some tools can embed the archive in the executable itself.

answered Dec 24, 2009 at 6:39

If you really want, you could always compile with Cython. This will generate C code, which you can then compile with any C compiler such as GCC.

Cython is great. But unfortunately, cythonized code is too far from vanilla Python. There is a Python → 11l → C++ transpiler which requires much less work. 

==that optimized Python code immediately ends up in the “legacy” pile. It’s doesn’t come close to the C version regarding readability.==