Here is a useful little shell function I came up with while experimenting with Cython (http://cython.org/). Put it in your ~/.bashrc and then use it to compile a Cython source code file (*.pyx extension) into a standalone executable and run it directly.

pyxrun.sh

pyxrun() {
    PYTHON="${PYTHON:-python}"

    if [ "x$1" = "x-t" ]; then
        local timeit="time"
        shift
    fi

    if [ -z "$1" ]; then
        echo "usage: pyxrun [-t] <file>.pyx"
        return 2
    else
        pyx="$1"
        bn="${pyx%.*}"
        shift
    fi

    if [ ! -x "$bn" -o "$pyx" -nt "$bn.c" ]; then
        cython --embed "$pyx" && \
            gcc -o "$bn" "$bn.c" `$PYTHON-config --cflags --ldflags`
        if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
            echo "Compilation of $pyx failed."
            return 1
        fi
    fi

    eval $timeit "`dirname $pyx`/${bn##*/}" "$@"
}