linkedin/shiv

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

1946 stars · 113 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

shiv is a command line utility from LinkedIn for building fully self-contained Python zipapps (PEP 441) with all dependencies bundled into a single executable file. It wraps pip-installed packages into distributable .pyz executables that run anywhere a compatible Python interpreter exists.

Use cases

• package a python cli tool into a single executable
• distribute a python app without asking users to pip install
• build a self-contained zipapp with dependencies included
• create a portable flake8 executable
• ship python scripts to machines without virtualenvs
• bundle a python program into one file for deployment

When to choose

• you want to distribute a Python application as a single file with dependencies bundled
• target machines have Python installed but you cannot use pip or virtualenvs
• you want a lightweight alternative to PyInstaller without bundling an interpreter

When to avoid

• you need a truly standalone binary that works without Python installed
• you need compiled C extensions to work reliably across platforms
• you want to freeze an app into a native executable like PyInstaller or Nuitka provides

Facets

cli-tool · maturity active

cli package-manager build-tool developer-tools developer-tools windows python cli cross-platform zipapp pep-441 packaging python-packaging self-contained-executables distribution command-line automation linux macos

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="linkedin/shiv")