if I'm writing a package in Python for distribution and I put some scripts to be regarded as executables in the scripts of setup.py, is there a standard way to make them not have the *.py extension? Is it sufficient to just make files that do not have the .py extension, or is anything extra needed? Will removing the .py from the filename that break any of the functionality associated with Python tools like setup.py/distutils etc? Thanks.
If you need Windows compatibility then either don't remove the .py extension or use setuptools' entry_points option that automatically generates appropriate for the system script files e.g., to install pip.main() function as a script, pip specifies in setup.py:
entry_points=dict(console_scripts=['pip=pip:main',
'pip-%s=pip:main' % sys.version[:3]]),
It makes sense to use entry_points even if you don't need Windows compatibility because it generates the correct shebang for you that points to a specific python interpreter (where generic #! /usr/bin/env python would be the wrong thing).