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pymakeself: make self-extracting archives

Project description

# pymakeself

Make self-extracting archives with Python, on most operating systems.

## Overview

pymakeself is a Python script that generates a self-extractable tar.gz archive from a directory. The resulting file appears as a Python script, and can be launched as is. The archive will then uncompress itself to a temporary directory and run an optional python setup script. pymakeself archives also include a MD5 checksum for integrity self-validation.

The makeself.py script itself is used only to create the archive from a directory of files. The resultant archive is actually a compressed (gzip or bzip2) TAR archive, with a small Python script stub at the beginning. This small stub performs all the steps of extracting the files, running the embedded setup script, and cleaning up afterward. The user only needs to "run" the archive to install its contents, i.e `python install-nice-app.py`.

This code is intended to be as portable as possible and should run on any system with an installation of python2.7 or later. Other than Python, it does not rely on external utilities such as tar, gzip, bash etc.

As of version 0.2.2, pymakeself has been tested on the following platforms:

- Linux (all distributions)
- FreeBSD
- MacOS X

Testing with these whould be done soon:

- Windows7-10

## Install

```
sudo pip install pymakeself
```

## Usage

The pymakeself package installs the `pymakeself` command. This is the same as running `python -m pymakeself`, and has the following syntax:

```
pymakeself [args] content_dir file_name setup_script [script_args]
```
The `args` beginning with `-` or `--` are optional. The available options are:

`--version` : Prints the version number on stdout, then exits immediately

`--help, -h` : Print out this help message.

`--quiet, -q` : Do not print any messages other than errors.

`--tools, -t` : Include installtools module.

`--gzip` : Use gzip for compression (is the default)

`--bzip2` : Use bzip2 instead of gzip for better compression.

`--xz` : Compress using xz instead of gzip. This requires Python3.x for both creation and extraction.

`--follow` : Follow the symbolic links inside of the archive directory, i.e. store the files that are being pointed to instead of the links themselves.

`--nomd5` : Disable the creation of a MD5 checksum for the archive. This speeds up the extraction process if integrity checking is not necessary.

`content_dir` is the name of the directory that contains the files to be archived.

`file_name` is the name of the installer script to be created.

`setup_script` is a Python script to be executed from within the extracted content directory, that is run using the same Python interpreter used to run the installer. If the script is already located inside the content directory then only specify the name of the script. Otherwise, provide a relative or absolute path to the script so that it can be copied into the installer archive. The special value `@accountutil` tells pymakeself to use the Unix [account creation tool](https://github.com/gammazero/pymakeself/blob/master/pymakeself/installtools/accountutil.py), included in the pymakeself package, as the `setup_script`.

Here is an example, assuming the user has a package image stored in a `/home/jane/mysoft`, and wants to generate a self-extracting package named install_mysoft.py, which will launch the `setup.py` script initially stored in `/home/jane/mysoft`:
```
pymakeself.py --label "Jane's Nice Software Package" /home/jane/mysoft install_mysoft setup.py
```

Here is how I created a `install_pymakeself.py` installer that installs the pymakeself distribution:
```
pymakeself --label "PyMakeSelf by Andrew Gillis" pymakeself install_pymakeself setup.py install
```

Archives generated with pymakeself can be passed the following arguments:

`--check` : Check the archive's MD5 sum and exit.

`--extract` : Extract package contents to temporary directory and exit.

Any subsequent arguments to the archive will be passed as additional arguments to the embedded command.

## Examples

Create an installer, named install_stuff, that runs setup.py:

```
pymakeself /storage/myfiles install_stuff setup.py
```

Create an installer that runs the `accountutil.py` tool (one of the modules in the pymakeself installtools) as the setup script, to create the "ajg" user account:
```
pymakeself ~/ajg_dot_files create_ajg @accountutil \
-c 'Andrew J. Gillis' -i ./ ajg
```
Specifying `@accountutil` as the setup script tells pymakeself to use the UNIX account creation tool, that is included with the pymakeself package.

Notice that the `-i` argument to accountutil specifies `./` instead of `ajg_dot_files`. This is because the setup file is always run from within the archive directory.

## Library

The pymakeself package can also be imported into a python script and used as a library.

```
from pymakeself import makeself

exe_path = makeself.make_package(
"/home/ajg/stuff", "install_stuff", "setup.py",
compress="bz2", label="my cool stuff")

```

To see documentation on `make_package()` run: `pydoc pymakeself.makeself.make_package`

## Project Links

- Project page: <https://github.com/gammazero/pymakeself>
- Documentation: <https://github.com/gammazero/pymakeself/wiki>
- License: <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php>

## Bugs and Issues

<https://github.com/gammazero/pymakeself/issues>

## Acknowledgments

This script was inspired by, and modeled after, makeself by Stephane Peter.


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