Command-line tools

One file

The default single target writes one .py that contains a small importer and every bundled module:

$ shakeout build tool.py -o dist
$ scp dist/tool.py server: && ssh server python3 tool.py --help

It needs only a Python interpreter and the standard library on the target machine. Code that imports compiled third-party extensions can't live in a single file. Use tree or pyz, or include pure-Python packages so they are bundled.

Zipapp

$ shakeout build tool.py -t pyz -o dist
$ ./dist/tool.pyz --help

pyz writes a zipapp with a shebang. Sources inside the archive are registered with linecache, so warnings and tracebacks show code lines, which plain zipapps do not.

Smaller still

--minify drops comments and blank lines but keeps every remaining line at its original line number. --strip-docstrings also removes docstrings, like python -OO. Only use it when nothing reads __doc__: argparse and click help texts often do.