This repo is highly inspired by another similar work done here. The only reason I re-attempted it, so that I can get the first hand experience and also resolve some difficulties I faced while using the above solution.

Build an Airflow pex by running:

./pants binary src/python/ariflow:airflow

This produces airflow.pex, a single file that is analogous to a statically-lined binary. It's a self-contained, runnable Airflow you can scp to another machine and run. However, ideally you would zip this whole folder and scp to remote machine.

You can then run Airflow commands, using airflow_cli wrapper, which internally calls the airflow.pex file. You can also use this wrapper file to modify the Airflow config variables.

./airflow_cli version
[2019-09-16 22:52:23,399] {__init__.py:51} INFO - Using executor SequentialExecutor
  ____________       _____________
 ____    |__( )_________  __/__  /________      __
____  /| |_  /__  ___/_  /_ __  /_  __ \_ | /| / /
___  ___ |  / _  /   _  __/ _  / / /_/ /_ |/ |/ /
 _/_/  |_/_/  /_/    /_/    /_/  \____/____/|__/  v1.10.5

To start the webserver

./airflow_cli webserver

To start the Scheduler

./airflow_cli scheduler

If you've noticed the dags and plugins folder are part of airflow_home folder, but ideally they should be part of the airflow.pex itself. We can easily bundle dags and plugins as well in the airflow.pex like we've bundled libs folder, but unfortunately Airflow can't read them from airflow.pex/dags or airflow.pex/plugins directly, so you can unzip the final PEX at the server and move them inside airflow_home folder.