diff --git a/MetaTools/makeTarball.py b/MetaTools/makeTarball.py
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..e93a85632
--- /dev/null
+++ b/MetaTools/makeTarball.py
@@ -0,0 +1,46 @@
+#! /usr/bin/env python
+#
+# Script to make a compressed tar archive of the directory 
+# the script is living in, excluding CVS directories.
+#
+
+
+import os, sys
+
+
+script = os.path.join(os.getcwd(), sys.argv[0])
+srcdir = os.path.normpath(os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(script)))
+wdir, src = os.path.split(srcdir)
+
+try:
+	execfile(os.path.join(srcdir, "Lib", "fontTools", "__init__.py"))
+	version  # make sure we now have a variable named "version"
+except (IOError, NameError):
+	version = None
+
+
+destdir = None
+if sys.argv[1:]:
+	destdir = os.path.normpath(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), sys.argv[1]))
+	assert os.path.isdir(destdir), "destination is not an existing directory"
+
+os.chdir(wdir)
+
+if version:
+	tar = src + "-%s.tgz" % version
+else:
+	tar = src + ".tgz"
+
+print "source:", src
+print "dest:", tar
+
+if sys.platform[:6] == "darwin":
+	tool = "gnutar"
+else:
+	tool = "tar"
+
+os.system('%s --exclude=CVS -czf %s %s/' % (tool, tar, src))
+
+if destdir:
+	print "destination directory:", destdir
+	os.system('mv %s %s' % (gz, destdir))