Is `zip` really required to build?

[HalosGhost]

It seems crazy to me that zip is needed to "build" a project where the source files are available in the repo unarchived. Is this really needed?

[ghost]

For linux zip is needed to create one standalone executable file...

All python files are zipped + some python magic = you have youtube-dl in one file, that can be executed and it works :)

Here is the code from Makefile, that make it happen https://github.com/rg3/youtube-dl/blob/master/Makefile#L43-L49

[phihag]

Yes, this is correct, see http://bugs.python.org/issue1739468 . When building youtube-dl to a single youtube-dl file, we need some way to put all the files into one archive, and Python only supports zip, so zip it is.

You can simply unpack the youtube_dl directory though and then run python -m youtube_dl. However, many users prefer a single-file installation.

[ghost]

@phihag if i understand it correctly, youtube-dl is extracted everytime we run it? If yes maybe it's the problem of slowness on rpi #3029?

[phihag]

@pulpe I thought I had commented on that. Yes, that may be one reason, although my previous experiments indicated the main overhead may be Python parsing.