Showing posts with label compilation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label compilation. Show all posts

Tutorial: Compile Python to EXE

Posted: Monday, 15 September 2014

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Introduction

So we all know Python. Its a fun extension to the C language (Read: a language built on top of C). But one question, is, why can't we compile Python into an exe file, just like with C?

Now Python is an interesting language, in that it is both compiled and interpreted. In fact, there are many different implementations of the language. We have PyPy, on one hand, which does both, IronPython, which is basically a .NET compiler for Python, but the main focus is on CPython - Or what we all know as "Python". CPython is the "main reference implementation" of Python, and is the "Python" that is downloaded at https://www.python.org/.

It's weird to think that "Python" is not just Python, but makes sense considering the fact that Python is open source. A similar comparison between PyPy/IronPython and CPython can be made with JavaScript (js), where js is implemented not as "JavaScript", but as V8, spidermonkey, rhino and much more. We've come a long way from the monopoly that Microsoft has from their own programming languages, C#, VB.net and VBScript.