mucro

Wouldn't it be nice to use your python apps without activating a virtualenv?

Imagine you have a python app blah.py. This is what you do:

$ source env/bin/activate
(env) $ mucro --pyfile blah.py --bindir ~/bin

This will create an executable in the dir: ~/bin/blah. Now you can call that executable from anywhere (it's on your $PATH right?). That executable will use the virtualenv you activated when you ran the mucro command, so you don't have to activate a virtualenv!

You can even continue to hack on blah.py in one shell (with your dev virtualenv activated), and run it inside another shell window in another path, with no virtualenv actived! YES!

Install

This will create a mucro executable on your $PATH:

$ git clone git@github.com:cjrh/mucro.git
$ cd mucro
$ python3 mucro.py --pyfile mucro.py --bindir ~/bin

Be sure to replace ~/bin with your own folder for such things that is on your $PATH.

Uninstall

$ cd mucro
$ ./mucro-uninstall

This will remove the symlink that was created in ~/bin in the install step.

How does it work?

The answer is super boring, I'm afraid: mucro creates a new shell script alongside the original py file, makes that shell script executable, and then symlinks that into your target bin directory.

So if it's putting all this stuff all over the place, how do I clean it up? Glad you asked! in addition to creating the blah executable, it will also create a blah-uninstall executable that will delete the symlink, the executable and the uninstaller itself!

What's in a name?

The name mucro means a short sharp point at the end of a part or organ. In this analogy, the organ is your python application, and the sharp point is the executable entry point that can be accessed via $PATH. Yes, I know it's a stretch but coming up with good, unused names on GitHub is hard.