Usage

inline-importer installs a script, inline-python. This script is the main interface that you should interact with inline-importer.

Note

If you can’t run inline-python, the same functionality can be achieved by running python -m inline_importer instead of inline-python.

A full list of the options, along with small documentation, can be obtained by adding the -h option to the inline-python command.

Simple Usage

For simple scripts, only a few of inline-python’s options are required.

  • If there are packages to inline, add a --input-package option with the paths to the package folder (containing the __init__.py) or to the __init__.py itself. inline-importer will recursively find all subpackages and submodules and inline them.

  • If there are modules to inline, add a --input-module option with the paths to the modules.

  • The entrypoint file should be specified using the --entrypoint-file option.

  • The output file should be specified using the --output-file option.

Caution

inline-importer does not process the inputs (entrypoint, module, package). It will read the source code and inline it as is, without executing it. It also won’t try to automatically inline any dependencies that are imported by the inlined code.

Warning

inline-importer does not support importing namespace packages (PEP 420).

Simple Example

In this simple example, we will use the following project structure. Our goal will be to generate a single file, containing the entire project.

project/
|- src/
| |- moduleA.py
| |- pkgB/
|   |- __init__.py
|   |- submodC.py
|- scripts/
  |- entrypoint.py

  • scripts/entrypoint.py is the entrypoint of the script, the “if __name__ == "__main__":” chunk.

  • src/ contains a number of modules and packages that are imported, both directly and indirectly by the entrypoint.

In this case, in order to inline module moduleA, package pkgB, along with entrypoint.py, into final-script.py, one would issue the following command:

inline-python -m src/moduleA.py -p src/pkgB -e scripts/entrypoint.py -o final-script.py

The output file, final-script.py will contain the Importer component, the inlined modules and packages, and the entrypoint. This output file is now self-contained, and can be distributed far and wide.