You might also want to look at Scipy's weave: http://www.scipy.org/Weave http://www.scipy.org/Weave It's not as small or self-contained, but it looks to be mo

You might also want to look at Scipy's weave: http://www.scipy.org/Weave http://www.scipy.org/Weave It's not as small or self-contained, but it looks to be more actively maintained. A comparison with some other optimization methods: http://www.scipy.org/PerformancePython http://www.scipy.org/PerformancePython