I've been using cx_Freeze for a while now and there is one thing I've really wanted to do: put ALL files into ONE executable that I can distribute. It's not really user-friendly to send around a folder filled with 30 files, all in the same directory. How can I accomplish this?
Thanks.
It is not supported in cx_freeze. There was discussion about it on mailing list. As I recall, the author stated that others (PyInstaller, Py2Exe) use some dirty hacks to achieve that. Some anti-virus programs can consider that behavior as a virus also.
I used PyInstaller for some time, but went back to cx_freeze because of Python 2.7 support. I pack everything using Inno Setup, so it is easy to distribute. Depends if you use Windows or not.
Isn't this what bbfreeze does?
Tutorial here: http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2010/08/19/a-bbfreeze-tutorial-build-a-binary-series/
It's actually not that hard to roll your own with Python zipimport http://docs.python.org/library/zipimport.html
You may prefer to use something like UPX which is a more general solution, not Python only. http://upx.sourceforge.net/
You can use 'bdist_msi' instead of 'build'. This will create a dist folder in the directory with a single setup application.
http://cx-freeze.readthedocs.io/en/latest/distutils.html
According to the documentation
cx_Freeze does not support building a single file exe, where all of the libraries for your application are embedded in one executable file.
The documentation gives some options to obtain a single file.
A further option under Windows is to use the bdist_msi command to create a single Microsoft Installer file (.msi) for your application, as mentioned by #QuaziRabbi. This command has few cx_Freeze-specific options documented here to customize the installer. This command overloads the bdist_msi command of the distutils package which itself brings some more options to customize the installer. The available options are not documented, one need to look at the source code of the distutils package. Interesting examples are Use cx-freeze to create an msi that adds a shortcut to the desktop and cx_freeze bdist_msi: create registry entries?
Another option is to use another tool to create a more customizable single-file installer for the frozen application after the cx_Freeze build step. The script-based tool NSIS (Nullsoft Scriptable Install System) allows one to create a very customizable installer and the use of a script means that this step can be completely automatized. #Fenisko's answers mentions another tool, and there are many more.
Related
I need to package my Python application, its dependencies, and Python itself into a single MSI installer for distribution to users. The end result should desirably be:
Python is installed in the standard location
the package and its dependencies are installed in a separate directory (possibly site-packages)
the installation directory should contain the Python uncompressed and a standalone executable is not required
Kind of a dup of this question about how to make a python into an executable.
It boils down to:
py2exe on windows, Freeze on Linux, and
py2app on Mac.
I use PyInstaller (the svn version) to create a stand-alone version of my program that includes Python and all the dependencies. It takes a little fiddling to get it to work right and include everything (as does py2exe and other similar programs, see this question), but then it works very well.
You then need to create an installer. NSIS Works great for that and is free, but it creates .exe files not .msi. If .msi is not necessary, I highly recommend it. Otherwise check out the answers to this question for other options.
My company uses the free InnoSetup tool. It is a moderately complex program that has tons of flexibility for building installers for windows. I believe that it creates .exe and not .msi files, however. InnoSetup is not python specific but we have created an installer for one of our products that installs python along with dependencies to locations specified by the user at install time.
I've had much better results with dependencies and custom folder structures using pyinstaller, and it lets you find and specify hidden imports and hooks for larger dependencies like numpy and scipy. Also a PITA, though.
py2exe will make windows executables with python bundled in.
py2exe is the best way to do this. It's a bit of a PITA to use, but the end result works very well.
Ok, I have used py2exe before and it works perfectly except for one thing... It only works on executable windows machines. I then learned about Jython which turn a python script into a .Jar file. Which as you know is executable from any machine that has Java ("To your latest running version") installed. Which is great because both unix, windows, and ios (Most of the time) Run java. That means its executable from all of the following machines. As long as they run Java. No need for "py2mac + py2exe + freeze" just to run on all operating systems. Just Jython
For more information on how it works and how you can use it click here.
http://www.jython.org/
I am doing this practice project to implement a LISP interpreter in Python, using help from here. I wanted to create an exe file for the project, executing which would start a REPL.
I tried using py2exe and pyInstaller but an error is thrown when I execute the output binary, saying that this script cannot run.
Where did I go wrong with my approach and what alternative ways can I use?
Thank you.
It is hard to know for sure but have you checked that all of the required dependencies for your project are either in the same folder as the created executable or (at least) in your path?
The other alternative that I am aware of (and use) is cx_Freeze. This particular exe builder has cross platform support.
cx_Freeze will attempt to automatically find all dependent python modules and include them in the final build. I imagine that the other two options work in the same manner. Packages that cannot be automatically located and binary dependencies (eg dlls, sos) must be explicitly specified in the build configuration scripts.
One method I have for debugging for missing dependencies is to manually copy the suspected missing dependency into the same folder as the .exe to see if it fixes the issue. If it does then I will specify it in the build configuration script.
See https://cx-freeze.readthedocs.io/en/latest/distutils.html for cx_Freeze documentation, in particular section titled build_exe.
Here is a good example of a non-trival setup.py for cx_Freeze: http://www.pythonexample.com/code/cx_freeze-setup/
I created a Python script for a Freelance job and I can't find how to compile/build/package it for easy sharing. The person for which I created it is not a technical one, so I can't explain him how to activate a virtualenv, install requirements and so on.
What is the easiest way for him to run the project right after downloading it?
Can the whole virtualenv be compiled into an .exe? If yes, can this be done inside a macOS system?
Yes you can package your python programs and it's dependencies with
Cx_Freeze
There are other python modules that do the same, personally i prefer cx_Freeze because it's cross platform and was the only one that worked out of the box for me.
By default cx_Freeze automatically discovers modules and adds them to the exe to be generated. but sometimes this doesn't work and you might have to add them by yourself
To create a simple executable from a file. you can just use the bundled cxfreeze script
cxfreeze hello.py --target-dir dist
but more for more complex applications that have different files you'll have to create a distutils setup script.
Note that cx_freeze doesn't compile your code like a traditional compiler. it simply zips your python files and all it's dependencies ( as byte code) together, and includes the python interpreter to make your program run. So your code can be disassembled. (if anyone wants to) and you'll also notice that the size of your program would be larger than it was initially (Because of the extra files included)
I ended up using PyInstaller as this worked out of the box for me.
I wrote a program which uses a number of built in modules. The program is meant to be used by different persons on their systems. They dont have enough knowledge in python to install it when their system doesnt have the module needed to run the program. Is there any way of handling that.
Also I want to package the program as an executable in linux. It contains 3 py files and one text file only.
I think what you need is to create a debian package that handles the dependencies and the installation process.
I'm an Ubuntu user but this Complete Ubuntu Packaging Guide should help you get started. Good luck!
You can create an executable that contains your python modules and the python interpreter. You can use PyInstaller for creating such an executable.
I think the easiest way to achieve this on a debian distribution is to package your python application in a debian package. You can use this module to make life easier.
Guys, I have much python code in modules which are resides in several python packages and now I need to create single python executable module or file which will include all these files, so it will be working on windows and on linux servers. What are possible solutions and how this can be done?
For windows use py2exe , for linux use pyinstaller and for Mac use py2app
Using these tools you can have a setup.py which based on os will build the final binary.
I have tried all three and they work well, or you can use cx_freeze they claim to be cross-platform
That's what egg files are for. Read this: What are the advantages of packaging your python library/application as an .egg file?
Maybe py2exe can help you ..
py2exe is a Python Distutils extension which converts Python scripts into executable Windows programs, able to run without requiring a Python installation.
Tutorial > http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/Tutorial
You can kivy for python cross plat form application .
Kivy - Open source Python library for rapid development of applications
that make use of innovative user interfaces, such as multi-touch apps