Running command: $ mkdir foo; python -mzipfile -c foo.zip foo; python -mzipfile -e foo.zip dest ls: cannot access dest: No such file or directory This is because 'foo.zip' is empty since running 'python -mzipfile -c foo.zip foo' does not zip empty directories. Running 'unzip foo.zip' also produces: Archive: foo.zip warning [foo.zip]: zipfile is empty The following posted patch fixes this issue.