Cython is a superset of python that adds support for blazing fast c/c++ functions. cythonrun lets you compile and run cython files in one line. Windows, OSX and Linux are supported.

Installation

Clone or download the github repository and run the setup by entering:

$ python setup.py install

Alternatively you can also install the package via pip:

$ pip install cythonrun

You can now call the three scripts cythonrun.py, makecython.py and runcython.py in every directory.

Usage

# hello.pyx
def main():
    print 'hello, world'

You can use python cythonrun.py directly for compiling and running the pyx-file in one go.
Or you can use makecython.py just for compiling the executable and run it aftewards with runcython.py. You should only make sure that you have a main() function definition in your pyx-file to let the runcython.py program know where to start the execution of the code.

$ python cythonrun.py hello.pyx
('Found Project name:', 'hello.pyx')
('Found Program name:', 'hello.pyx')
Compiling hello.pyx because it changed.
Cythonizing hello.pyx
running build_ext
building 'hello' extension
creating build
creating build\temp.win32-2.7
creating build\temp.win32-2.7\Release
c:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN\cl.exe /c /nologo /Ox 
/MD /W3 /GS- /DNDEBUG -IC:\Python27\include -IC:\Python27\PC /Tchello.c /Fobuild 
\temp.win32-2.7\Release\hello.obj hello.c
:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\VC\BIN\link.exe /DLL /nologo 
/INCREMENTAL:NO /LIBPATH:C:\Python27\libs /LIBPATH:C:\Python27\PCbuild /EXPORT:i 
nithello build\temp.win32-2.7\Release\hello.obj /OUT:C:\Python27\Programme\Cython
\cythonrun\hello.pyd /IMPLIB:build\temp.win32-2.7\Release\hello.lib /MANIFESTFILE:
build\temp.win32-2.7\Release\hello.pyd.manifest
Bibliothek "build\temp.win32-2.7\Release\hello.lib" und Objekt "build\temp.win32-
2.7\Release\hello.exp" werden erstellt.
('Running Program:', 'hello.pyx')
hello, world

You can use python cythonrun.py file.pyx just like you would use python file.py.
The difference is that cythonrun.py will run a file with arbitrary cython code.

# accum.pyx
def main():
    cdef int i, n, accum
    accum = 0
    n = 10**7
    for i in range(n):
        accum += i
    print i
main()

$ python cythonrun.py accum.pyx
('Found Project name:', 'accum.pyx')
('Found Program name:', 'accum.pyx')
running build_ext
('Running Program:', 'accum.pyx')
9999999
('Implemented functions:', ['main'])
9999999
0.0161808932649 seconds execution time.

There's no need to muck around with distutils or intermediate files. Using cython the typical way would require creating 5 distinct files, accum.pyx, accum.c, accum.pyd, setup.py, and use.py. That's a lot of moving parts to keep track of. cythonrun.py keeps things simple so that you can just focus on writing fast code. If you want to output a module for use in your other python files, you can always use makecython.py instead. If the code has already been compiled you can use runcython.py just for executing/testing the compiled module. Make sure you have main() definition inside your module as an entry point for runcython.py.

There are some sample files in the repository (accum.py(x), circle.py(x) and hello.pyx) for your convenience to test and compare cython compiled modules in one go against the pure python modules.