Create an application archive from *source*. The source can be any

of the following:

* The name of a directory, in which case a new application archive

will be created from the content of that directory.

* The name of an existing application archive file, in which case the file is

* A file object open for reading in bytes mode. The content of the

file should be an application archive, and the file object is

assumed to be positioned at the start of the archive.

The *target* argument determines where the resulting archive will be

written:

* If it is the name of a file, the archive will be written to that

file.

* If it is an open file object, the archive will be written to that

file object, which must be open for writing in bytes mode.

* If the target is omitted (or None), the source must be a directory

and the target will be a file with the same name as the source, with

a ``.pyz`` extension added.

The *interpreter* argument specifies the name of the Python

interpreter with which the archive will be executed. It is written as

a "shebang" line at the start of the archive. On POSIX, this will be

interpreted by the OS, and on Windows it will be handled by the Python

launcher. Omitting the *interpreter* results in no shebang line being

written. If an interpreter is specified, and the target is a

filename, the executable bit of the target file will be set.

The *main* argument specifies the name of a callable which will be

used as the main program for the archive. It can only be specified if

the source is a directory, and the source does not already contain a

is an error to omit *main* if the source is a directory and does not

contain a ``__main__.py`` file, as otherwise the resulting archive

would not be executable.

If a file object is specified for *source* or *target*, it is the

caller's responsibility to close it after calling create_archive.

When copying an existing archive, file objects supplied only need

``read`` and ``readline``, or ``write`` methods. When creating an

archive from a directory, if the target is a file object it will be

There is no requirement that the tools in this module are used to create

application archives - the module is a convenience, but archives in the above

format created by any means are acceptable to Python.