diff --git a/.gitignore b/.gitignore
index 3a01fbbf9..74f0283a8 100644
--- a/.gitignore
+++ b/.gitignore
@@ -28,6 +28,7 @@ picard.egg-info
 po/attributes/attributes.pot
 po/countries/countries.pot
 scripts/picard
+tagger.py
 win-version-info.txt
 
 # Other files
diff --git a/.travis.yml b/.travis.yml
index 35c88f88e..5963d35a7 100644
--- a/.travis.yml
+++ b/.travis.yml
@@ -91,7 +91,8 @@ before_install:
 
 script:
 - py.test -v --cov=picard --cov-report xml:coverage.xml test
-- python3 setup.py build_locales build_ext -i
+- python3 setup.py build
+- python3 setup.py build_ext -i
 - python3 tagger.py --long-version
 - isort --check-only --diff --quiet $(git ls-tree -r --name-only $(git rev-parse HEAD) | grep "\\.py$")
 - flake8 picard
diff --git a/MANIFEST.in b/MANIFEST.in
index c45fb8934..0bf4496ed 100644
--- a/MANIFEST.in
+++ b/MANIFEST.in
@@ -4,7 +4,6 @@ prune test
 recursive-include scripts *.in
 recursive-exclude scripts picard
 
-include tagger.py
 include *.in
 
 include *.md
diff --git a/scripts/picard.in b/scripts/picard.in
index 7580da67c..7b67f8ecf 100644
--- a/scripts/picard.in
+++ b/scripts/picard.in
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 #!/usr/bin/env python3
-from picard.tagger import main; main('%(localedir)s', %(autoupdate)s)
-
+from picard.tagger import main
+main('%(localedir)s', %(autoupdate)s)
diff --git a/setup.py b/setup.py
index d42bb1aab..ccf6e5446 100644
--- a/setup.py
+++ b/setup.py
@@ -10,6 +10,7 @@ import glob
 from io import StringIO
 import os
 import re
+import stat
 import sys
 import tempfile
 
@@ -221,8 +222,10 @@ class picard_build(build):
             self.sub_commands.append(('build_locales', None))
 
     def run(self):
-        log.info('generating scripts/%s from scripts/picard.in', PACKAGE_NAME)
-        generate_file('scripts/picard.in', 'scripts/' + PACKAGE_NAME, {'localedir': self.localedir, 'autoupdate': not self.disable_autoupdate})
+        params = {'localedir': self.localedir, 'autoupdate': not self.disable_autoupdate}
+        generate_file('tagger.py.in', 'tagger.py', params)
+        make_executable('tagger.py')
+        generate_file('scripts/picard.in', 'scripts/' + PACKAGE_NAME, params)
         if sys.platform == 'win32':
             file_version = PICARD_VERSION[0:3] + (self.build_number,)
             file_version_str = '.'.join([str(v) for v in file_version])
@@ -740,11 +743,16 @@ args = {
 
 
 def generate_file(infilename, outfilename, variables):
+    log.info('generating %s from %s', outfilename, infilename)
     with open(infilename, "rt") as f_in:
         with open(outfilename, "wt") as f_out:
             f_out.write(f_in.read() % variables)
 
 
+def make_executable(filename):
+    os.chmod(filename, os.stat(filename).st_mode | stat.S_IEXEC)
+
+
 def find_file_in_path(filename):
     for include_path in sys.path:
         file_path = os.path.join(include_path, filename)
diff --git a/tagger.py b/tagger.py.in
old mode 100755
new mode 100644
similarity index 87%
rename from tagger.py
rename to tagger.py.in
index 04f92c1c1..35cb4f204
--- a/tagger.py
+++ b/tagger.py.in
@@ -16,4 +16,4 @@ if sys.platform == 'win32':
     os.environ['PATH'] = basedir + ';' + os.environ['PATH']
 
 from picard.tagger import main
-main(os.path.join(basedir, 'locale'), True)
+main(os.path.join(basedir, 'locale'), %(autoupdate)s)