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pex-tool
pex
Python2015–2025
pex-tool / pex

pex

A tool for generating .pex (Python EXecutable) files, lock files and venvs.

22Distinct people
28Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
4.2KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

A tool for generating .pex (Python EXecutable) files, lock files and venvs.

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 2:59:53 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year28 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-01-23 16:28:06 UTC to 2025-10-31 07:10:28 UTC.

02468102015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 2 submissions, 3 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC523
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC404
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC909
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC000
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC110
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

9 sources
I'm not sure why the Python community can't get it sorted out. We've been using Pipenv because it's one of a few tools that supports lockfiles/reproducible builds, and at the time we chose it, the Python packaging authority was advertising it as the official solution for Python packaging; however, after we were already invested in it, they backpedaled becaused the community realized it was very buggy and super slow (as in "it takes literally half an hour to add or remove or update any dependency"). We're finally getting around to migrating away, and we've settled on Twitter's github.com/pantsbuild/pants which is like Google's Bazel except that it's jankier in every way _except_ that Pants supports Python while Bazel doesn't (Bazel advertises Python support, but it doesn't work as the many Python 3 issues in their issue tracker can attest)
Read the rest
. The nicest thing about Pants is that it builds pex files (github.com/pantsbuild/pex) which are executable zip files that ship all of your dependencies except the Python interpreter and shared objects. I'm still not very satisfied with this solution, and it's still far, far worse than Go's dependency management and packaging model, but it's a dramatic improvement over Pipenv, virtualenv, etc (gives us both reproducibility and performance).
In Processing 40TB of code from 10M projects with a dedicated server and Go
Fully agree about Go; however, if you can't move away from Python, github.com/pantsbuild/pex is a pretty good alternative. It's an executable zip file that contains all of your python dependencies; you still need the Python interpreter and any shared objects that don't come with pip (e.g., for whatever reason, the Python graphviz package depends on the graphviz-devel system package and the latter doesn't ship via Pypi). It's still an order of magnitude worse than Go, but it's an order of magnitude better than pip or pipenv. :)
In Processing 40TB of code from 10M projects with a dedicated server and Go
I wish it had a better async story. We've had production outages that were difficult to debug because some third party library made a sync call deep in the call stack and starved the event loop. APM showed performance degradation in unrelated endpoints. Eventually health checks began failing and containers were killed, putting the load on other containers which inevitably fell over and so on. We've seen similar issues with CPU starvation due to CPU-intensive tasks as well, though they were more straightforward to debug. We also continue to see runtime type errors because someone forgot to await an async function: `rsp = aiohttp.get() # oops, rsp is the promise, not the response!`. As far as deployment goes, we've had good luck with pex files (executable zip files containing everything but the interpreter). https://github.com/pantsbuild/pe
Read the rest
x. Your deployment target still needs the right version of the Python interpreter and .so files that your dependencies might link against. Personally, I've found that Go solves most/all Python issues without introducing too many of its own--and anyone writing Python (sans mypy) doesn't get to chastise Go for lacking generics! :)
In Drawbacks of Python
I should be more specific about what I meant. I would like to see tox support `install_commands` (https://github.com/tox-dev/tox/issues/715) I would like to see pex support the `build-system` feature. (https://github.com/pantsbuild/pex/issues/660) For pip, I'm not sure what's involved in getting everything to work generically. This is probably not simple. It has the consequence that when we don't have control over the install command, we end up needing hacks like using `extras` for ReadTheDocs (e.g. https://github.com/readthedocs/readthedocs.org/issues/4912#i...)
In Poetry: Dependency Management for Python
Here we go :) Packaging, the easy way Because I'm not on a blog, I can't go too much into details, and I'm sorry about that. It would be better to take more time on each point, but use them as starting point. I'll assume you know what virtualenv and pip. If you don't, check a tutorial on them first, it's important. But I'm going to go beyond packaging, because it will make your life much easier. If you want to skip context, just go to the short setup.cfg section. 1 - Calling Python Lots of tutorials tell you to use the "python" command. But in reality, often several versions of Python are installed, or worst, the "python" command is not available. WINDOWS: If the python command is not available, uninstall Python, and install it back again (using the official installer), but this time making sure that the "Add Python to PATH" box is ticked
Read the rest
. Or add the directory containing "python.exe", and its sibling "Scripts" directory to the OS system PATH manually (check a tutorial on that). Restart the console. Also, unrelated, but use a better console. cmd.exe sucks. cmder (https://cmder.net/) is a nice alternative. Then, don't use the Python command on Windows. Use the "py -x.y" command. It will let you choose which version of Python you call. So "py -2.7" calls python 2.7 (if installed) and "py -3.6" calls Python 3.6. Every time you see a tutorial on Python telling you to do "python this", replace it mentally with "py -x.y". UNIXES (mac, linux, etc): Python is suffixed. Don't just call "python". Call pythonX.Y. E.G: python2.7 to run python 2.7 and python3.6 to run Python 3.6. Every time you see a tutorial on Python tell you to do "python this", replace it mentally with "pythonX.Y". Not PythonX. Not "python2" or "python3". Insist on being precise: python2.7 or python3.5. LINUX: pip and virtualenv are often NOT installed with Python, because of packaging policies. Install it with your package manager for each version of Python. E.G: "yum install python3.6-pip" or "apt install python3.6-venv". FINALLY, FOR ANY OS: Use "-m". Don't call "pip", but "python -m pip". Don't call "venv", but "python -m venv". Don't call poetry but "python -m poetry." Which, if you follow the previous advices, will lead to things like "python3.6 -m pip" or "py -3.6 -m pip". Replace it mentally in tutorials, including this one. This will solve all PATH problems (no .bashrc or windows PATH fiddling :)) and will force you to tell which python version you use it with. It's a good thing. In any case, __use a virtualenv as soon as you can__. Use virtualenv for everything. One per project. One for testing. One for fun. They are cheap. Abuse them. In the virtualenv you can discard all the above advices: you can call "python" without any "py -xy" or suffixes, and you can call "pip" or "poetry" without "-m". Because the PATH is set correctly, and the default version of Python is the one you want. But there are some tools you will first install outside of venv, such as pew, poetry, etc. For those, use "-m" AND "--user". E.G: "python -m pip install poetry --user" "python -m poetry init" This solves PATH problems, python version problems, doesn't require admin rights and avoid messing with system packages. Do NOT use "sudo pip" or "sudo easy_install". 2 - Using requirements.txt You know the "pip install stuff", "pip freeze > requirements.txt", "pip install -r requirements.txt" ? It's fine. Don't be ashamed of it. It works, it's easy. I still use it when I want to make a quick prototype, or just a script. As a bonus, you can bundle a script and all it's dependencies with a tool named "pex" (https://github.com/pantsbuild/pex): pex . -r requirements.txt -o resulting_bundle.pex --python pythonX.Y -c your_script.py -f dist --disable-cache It's awesome, and allows you to use as many 3rd party dependencies as you want in quick script. Pex it, send it, "python resulting_bundle.pex" and it runs :) 3 - Using Setup.cfg At some point you may want to package your script, and distribute it to the world. Or maybe just make it pip installable from your git repo. Let's say you have this layout for your project: root_project_dir/ ├── your_package ├── README.md Turn it into: root_project_dir/ ├── your_package ├── README.md ├── setup.cfg ├── setup.py And you are done. Setup.py needs only one line, it's basically just a way to call setuptools to do the job (it replaces the poetry or pipenv command in a way): from setuptools import setup; setup() Setup.cfg will contain the metadata of your package (like a package.json or a pyproject.toml file): [metadata] name = your_package version = attr: your_package.__version__ description = What does it do ? long_description = file: README.md long_description_content_type = text/md author = You author_email = foo@bar.com url = https://stuff.com classifiers = # not mandatory but the full list is here: https://pypi.org/pypi?%3Aaction=list_classifiers Intended Audience :: Developers License :: OSI Approved :: MIT License Programming Language :: Python :: 3.5 Programming Language :: Python :: 3.6 Programming Language :: Python :: 3.7 Topic :: Software Development :: Libraries [options] packages = your_package install_requires = requests>=0.13 # or whatever [options.package_data] * = *.txt, *.rst hello = *.msg [options.extras_require] dev = pytest; jupyter # stuff you use for dev [options.package_data] # non python file you want to include * = *.jpg You can find all the fields available in the setup.cfg here: https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/setuptools.html#... Setup.cfg has been supported for 2 years now. It's supported by pip, tox, all the legacy infrastructures. Now, during dev you can do: "pip install -e root_project_dir". This will install your package, but the "-e" option will make it work in "dev mode", which allow you to import it, and see modifications you did to the code without reinstalling it every time. "setup.py develop" works too. If you publish it on github, you can now install your package doing: pip install git+https://github.com/path/to/git/repo.git You can also create a wheel out of it doing: python setup.py bdist_wheel The wheel will be in the "dist" dir. Anybody can then "pip install your_package.whl" to install it. Mail it, upload it on an ftp, slack it... If you want to upload it on pypi, create an account on the site, then "pip install twine" so you can do: twine upload dist/* Read the twine doc though, it's worth it: https://pypi.org/project/twine/ You could use "python setup.py bdist_wheel upload" instead of twine. It will work, but it's deprecated. 4 - Using pew Pew (https://github.com/berdario/pew#usage) is an alternative to venv, poetry, virtualenvwrapper and pipenv. It does very little. "pew new env_name --python python3.X" Creates the virtualenv. "pew workon env_name" Activates it. And optionally moves you to a directory of your choice. That's all. It's just a way to make managing virtualenv easier. Use pip as usual. You can know where your virtualenv has been created by looking up the $VIRTUAL_ENV var. This is especially useful for configuring your IDE, although I tend to just type "which python" on unix, and "where python" on Windows. 5 - Using poetry Now, if you need more reliability, poetry enters the game. Poetry will manage the virtualenv for you, will install packages in it automatically, will check all dependencies in a fast and reliable way (better than pip), creates a lock file AND update your package metadata file. I'm not going to enter into details on how this work, it's a great tool, with a good doc: https://github.com/sdispater/poetry You don't need to start with poetry. You can always migrate to it later. Most of my projects do the "requirements.txt" => "setup.cfg" migration at some point. Some of them move to poetry if I need the extra professionalism it provides. The problem with poetry is that it's only compatible with poetry. It uses the pyproject.toml format, which is supposedly standard now, but is unfinished. Because of this: any tool using it, including poetry, actually stores most data in custom proprietary fields in the file :( Also, it's not compatible with setuptools, which many infrastructures and tutorials assume. So you'll have to adapt to it. That being said, it's a serious and robust tool.
In Current State of Python Packaging
Nuitka (nuitka.net) does that for python, and is very robust and compatible. It works way better than py2exe, cx_freeze, etx, and is cross platform. However, the result, even for small scripts, is not what I would qualify as "small" :) I also like pex (https://github.com/pantsbuild/pex) which allows to bundle a whole venv as a python script. Less heavy than nuitka, doesn't make it stand alone though, but very handy for quick and dirty scripts I want to one shot on my servers. That doesn't remove any merit to nim. Such a cool project.
In Nim 0.20.0 (1.0 RC1) released
I don't know if it'd work the same way, but I've had a lot of success with Twitter's Pex files. They package an entire Python project into an archive with autorun functionality. You distribute a Pex file and users run it just like a Python file and it'll build/install dependencies, etc. before running the main script in the package. I used it to distribute dependencies to Yarn workers for PySpark applications and it worked flawlessly, even with crazy dependencies like tensorflow. I'm a really big fan of the project, it's well done. https://github.com/pantsbuild/pex
In “Python's batteries are leaking”
Well my team does that for one. We use Python packaging ecosystem, specify Python dependencies using standard tools like setup.py, requirements.txt and pip. All Python dependencies are baked into a fat Python package using PEX format[1]. Also tried Facebook's xar format[2], without success yet. What matters is to have a statically linked dependencies packaged in one executable file. Like a Windows exe file. Then you proceed with bundling in higher level OS dependencies, because each app is not just a Python package but also a collection of shell scripts, configs, configuration of paths for caches, output directories, system variables, etc. For this we throw everything into one directory tree and run FPM [3] command on it which turns the directory tree into a RPM package. We use a fpm parameter to specify installation location of that tree
Read the rest
to /opt or /usr elsewhere. The way to bundle it properly is to actually use two rpm packages linked together by rpm dependency. One for the app and the other for the deployment configuration. The reason is you only have one executable, but many possible versions of deploying it. Ie. depending on environment (dev, staging, prod) or you just simply want to run the same app in parallel with different configuration. eg. one rpm package for the app executable and statix files my_app_exe-2.0-1.noarch.rpm and many othe related config rpms my_app_dev-1.2-1.noarch.rpm (depends on my_app_exe > 2.0) my_app_prod-3.0-1.noarch.rpm (depends on my_app_exe == 2.0) You then install only the deployment packages and rpm system fetches the dependencies for you automatically. There are other mature places who use similar techniques for deployments, for example [4]. All of this then can be wrapped in even higher level of packaging, namely Docker. [1] https://github.com/pantsbuild/pex [2] https://code.fb.com/data-infrastructure/xars-a-more-efficien... [3] https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm [4] https://hynek.me/articles/python-app-deployment-with-native-...
In Goodbye Docker and Thanks for all the Fish

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