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How would I allow others to use my script from anywhere in the shell without having to type out the file extension?

Excuse the awkward question wording.
I've made a script. I would like for others to download it from github, and run it by typing programName argument1 argument2, similar to any other popular app used through the terminal such as Jupyter or even opening Atom/Sublime/etc. (ex:jupyter notebook, atom .). However, unlike Jupyter or sublime, my script isn't launching another app, it's a small app meant to be used in the shell.
Currently, to use my script, one must type into the command line python programName.py arg1 etc from within the file's directory.
How do I allow others to dl it and use it from anywhere (not having to be within the directory), without having to type out the whole python programName.py part, and only having to type programName arg1?

This blog post explains step by step how to create a distribution that you can install and it would turn into an executable.
You can refer to this github repo for a sample application.
The full documentation of setuptools is available here.
In general, you should configure your setup.py in order to use the command in the entry-point option:
setup(
name = "your_app_name",
packages = ["package_name"],
entry_points = {
"console_scripts": ['cmd_name = package_name.package_name:main']
},
....
)
This solution would work on every OS where you have installed python.

Your script may need to have an interpreter, "shebang", besides being "reachable" by the $PATH
#!interpreter [optional-arg]
For example, you could have something like
#!/usr/bin/env python
or to force a specific version
#!/usr/local/bin/python2.7
Next, your script needs to be available within the $PATH, check this answer that covers that part: https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/29608/53084

You can simply add your script to PATH variable in order to launch it from anywhere.
In Linux distros, you can simply do it by using a bash command PATH=$PATH:/path/to/your/script.
Make sure you don't have the space around the "=" operator.
Now, the second thing is you don't want your script to be named as pythonProgram.py.You can simply remove the extension .py from PythonProgram.py by adding a single line to the starting of your script.
Open up your script and at the very begining type #!/usr/bin/python.This should be the first line of your code.This line is called shebang and is used to tell the bash which interpreter to be used for compiling the script.
If everything went right, you will be able to run your script as pythonProgram arg1.

In addition to mabe02: Python is a scripting language and usually not compiled, which means you will need an interpreter to run your program.
Programms made in C f.e. can be run on its own because they were compiled into machine code by a compiler.
An interpreter is similar to a compiler as it reads your script and interprets it at runntime. That is why you need to write python before your programm, to tell your computer to interpret your script on runntime, using python. This doesn't mean that there are no possibilities to compile python as can be seen in the other answer and in this link Can a python program be run on a computer without Python? What about C/C++? (py2exe and py2app).

Batch Rendering file from a python script without openeing Maya

I have one Maya scene and a Python script where import obj files into it. I need to create a batch render file which calls the maya file and applies the script without opneing maya.
I have this code in a .sh file:
#!/bin/bash
"/Applications/Autodesk/maya2016/Maya.app/Contents/bin/Render" -r file -s 1 -e 4 -cam camera1 -rd "/Users/MyComp/Documents/maya/projects/default/images" "/Users/MyComp/Documents/maya/projects/default/Scenes/test1.mb"
But I have this code into the script which can be an issue or maybe not:
def renderFile(i):
cmds.setAttr("defaultRenderGlobals.imageFilePrefix", i, type="string")
cmds.render(batch=True)
If I execute this .sh file it renders without the python script. How can I add the python script?
I need that file for a renderfarm purposes

I know it's an old thread but thought I'd jump in just incase someone finds this thread in a search.
The comments seem a little confused. This comes from the fact that there are two different Python interpreters being talked about. The first is the system level one, which the original question seems to be talking about. In that case, you can use any of the various shell command launchers (like, subprocess/Popen) that suit your need. Here you are looking to run the render command like you would any other command in in the shell.
In the responses, people there are referring to the other interpreter, the custom Maya Python interpreter (mayapy.exe). In that case you are working with actual Maya libraries and it's the same as working with Python in it's shell, with the added Maya libraries/environment.
The two have different uses, the first is to control things like they were in the shell and the second is controlling things inside of a Maya context. Hope that clarifies things.

Python pdb on python script run as package

I have a python program that I usually run as a part of a package:
python -m mymod.client
in order to deal with relative imports inside "mymod/client.py." How do I run this with pdb - the python debugger. The following does not work:
python -m pdb mymod.client
It yields the error:
Error: mymod.client does not exist
EDIT #1 (to address possible duplicity of question)
My question isn't really about running two modules simultaneously python, rather it is about how to use pdb on a python script that has relative imports inside it and which one usually deals with by running the script with "python -m."
Restated, my question could then be, how do I use pdb on such a script while not having to change the script itself just to have it run with pdb (ie: preserving the relative imports inside the script as much as possible). Shouldn't this be possible, or am I forced to refactor in some way if I want to use pdb? If so what would be the minimal changes to the structure of the script that I'd have to introduce to allow me to leverage pdb.
In summary, I don't care how I run the script, just so long as I can get it working with pdb without changing it's internal structure (relative imports, etc) too much.

I think I have a solution.
Run it like this:
python -m pdb path/mymod/client.py arg1 arg2
that will run it as a script, but will not treat it as a package.
At the top of client.py, the first line should be:
import mymod
That will get the package itself loaded.
I am still playing with this, but it seems to work so far.

This is not possible. Though unstated in documentation, Python will not parse two modules via the -m command line option.

Python - running a script as a service with a name other than 'python'

I have a set of python scripts which I run as a daemon services. These all work great, but when all the scripts are running and I use top -u <USER>, I see all my scripts running as python.
I would really like to know which script is running under which process id. So is there any way to execute a python script as a different process name?
I'm stuck here, and I'm not ever sure what terms to Google. :-)
Note: I'm using Ubuntu Linux. Not sure if the OS matters or not.

Try using setproctitle. It should work fine on Linux.

Don't have a linux system here to test this on appropriately, but if the above doesn't work, you should be able to use the same trick they use for things like gzip etc.
The script has to tell what to run it at the top like this:
#!/usr/local/bin/python
Use a softlink like this:
ln -s /usr/local/bin/python ~/bin/myutil
Then just change your script to
#!~/bin/myutil
and it should show up that way instead. You may need to use a hard link instead of a soft link.
Launching a python script using the python script itself (and file associations and/or shell magic) is not very portable, but you can use similar methods on nearly any OS.

The easiest way to get this is using she bang. The first line of your python script should be:
#!/usr/bin/python
or
#!/usr/bin/python3
depending upon whether you use python or python3
and then assign executable permissions to the script as follows:
chmod +x <scriptname>
and then run the script as
./scriptname
this will show up as scriptname in top.

Calling to a Sikuli script from Python (Selenium)

While running Selenium tests on a website, I have some Flash elements that I cannot test with Selenium/Python. I wanted to call out for a separate terminal window, run the Sikuli OCR tests, and then back into the Selenium/Python testing. I've not been able to figure this out exactly. I put XXX where I do not know the arguments for a new Terminal to open and run the Sikuli script.
def test_05(self):
driver = self.driver
driver.get(self.base_url + "/")
driver.find_element_by_link_text("Home").click()
driver.find_element_by_id("open_popup").click()
driver.find_element_by_id("screen_name").send_keys("user")
driver.find_element_by_id("password").send_keys("pwd")
driver.find_element_by_id("login_submit").click()
driver.find_element_by_id("button").click()
time.sleep(120)
os.system('XXX')
os.system('./Sikuli/sikuli-script -r test.sikuli')
I am sure there are a couple items wrong here. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I've searched and read what I can find on this already, but can't get it all to work together.

I ran into a similar issue, so I wrote a CPython module for Sikuli. The module is hosted on GitHub and available via pip install sikuli. It's able to access an included Sikuli jar using pyjnius, so you don't have to use Jython or even install Sikuli itself (although I'd recommend it for recording purposes). The module currently covers most of the simpler Sikuli functions, so it should cover a lot of use cases.
After installing, a simple from sikuli import * will get you started, but as a best practice, I'd suggest only importing the functions you want to use. This is particularly important for this module, because sikuli has a type function which overrides Python's own type function.

If your sikuli script is completely independent and you just want to run it for once and then have control back to your python script.
Then you can create a batch file, which calls your sikuli script and call this batch file from your python script instead.
Once the batch file is done running, it exits and returns the control back to your python script.
Sample Batch file:
#echo off
call C:\Sikuli\runIDE.cmd -r C:\Automation\Test1.sikuli
exit
Code snippet to call Sikuli script from inside python:
import subprocess
def runSikuliScript(path):
filepath = path
p = subprocess.Popen(filepath, shell=True, stdout = subprocess.PIPE)
stdout, stderr = p.communicate()
print "Done Running Sikuli"
p = "C:\\Automation\\Test1\\test1.bat"
runSikuliScript(p)
// You can carry on writing your python code from here on

For calling Sikuli code from Selenium, my first choice would be TestAutomationEngr's suggestion of using Java, since Selenium and Sikuli both have native Java bindings.
Since you want to use Python, you should try running Selenium under Jython. It's important to remember that Sikuli is Jython, which is probably why you're not able to import it. (The other reason would be that you don't have it in Jython's module path.) I have not tried this myself, but there was a bug fixed last year in Selenium which indicates that it should be fine under Jython.
Note that if you call your Sikuli code directly from Jython, you need to add
from sikuli.Sikuli import *
to the top. This is because the Sikuli IDE implicitly adds that to all Sikuli code.
Finally, your last resort is to call Sikuli from the command line. There's an FAQ for that. You probably want the "without IDE" version, where you're calling Java and passing in the sikuli-script JAR file.