py2exe 0.9.2.0

News

The C-runtime library for Python 3 does NOT need a windows manifest any longer to load correctly (this is a feature of Python, not of py2exe).

py2exe now contains a hooks module which contains information about some standard packages. The goal is to fine-tune the build process so that no (at least less) warnings are emitted from modulefinder.

Thanks to a brand new modulefinder (based on Python’s importlib) py2exe can now find and extract modules even from packages you have installed as zipped eggs.

py2exe now longer uses a build directory for temporary files.

It is planned to achive full compatibility with the setup-scripts for Python 2; however this is probably not yet the case.

In addition to your beloved setup.py scripts :-), there is now also a command-line utility which allows to build the exe without any effort.

Running

py -3.4 -m py2exe.build_exe myscript.py

or (if you have the Python Scripts directory on your PATH):

build_exe myscript.py

will create an executable myscript.exe in the dist subdirectory.

If you add the -W <setup-script.py> switch to the above command line a commented setup.py script will be generated which can be used to further customize the exe:

py -3.4 -m py2exe myscript.py -W mysetup.py
... edit myssetup.py
py -3.4 mysetup.py py2exe

Installation

py -3.4 -m pip install py2exe

or

pip install py2exe

Using the builder

Build runtime archive for a script:

build_exe [-h] [-i modname] [-x modname] [-p package_name] [-O] [-s]
          [-r] [-f modname] [-v] [-c] [-d DESTDIR] [-l LIBNAME]
          [-b {0,1,2,3}] [-W setup_path]
          [-svc service]
          [script [script ...]]

positional arguments:

script

optional arguments:

-h, --help

show this help message and exit

-i modname, --include modname

module to include

-x modname, --exclude modname

module to exclude

-p package_name, --package package_name

module to exclude

-O, --optimize

use optimized bytecode

-s, --summary

print a single line listing how many modules were found and how many modules are missing

-r, --report

print a detailed report listing all found modules, the missing modules, and which module imported them.

-f modname, --from modname

print where the module <modname> is imported.

-v

verbose output

-c, --compress

create a compressed library

-d DESTDIR, --dest DESTDIR

destination directory

-l LIBNAME, --library LIBNAME

relative pathname of the python archive

-b option, --bundle-files option

How to bundle the files:

3 - create script.exe, python.dll, extensions.pyd, others.dll. 2 - create script.exe, python.dll, others.dll. 1 - create script.exe, others.dll. 0 - create script.exe.

-W setup_path, --write-setup-script setup_path

Do not build the executables; instead write a setup script that allows further customizations of the build process.

-svc svnmodule, –service svcmodule

The name of a module that contains a service

Using a setup-script

Creating an executable (or more than one at the same time) with a setup-script works in the same way as for Python 2. The command-line switches are the same as before; but they are NOT compatible with the command-line switches for the builder mentioned above.

Documentation about the setup-script and other usage tips are in the wiki pages at http://www.py2exe.org.

The bundle-files option explained

The applications that py2exe creates will always need the following parts:

1. The exe-file(s) itself. py2exe can build several executables at the same time; this is especially useful if these are related to each other since some parts can be shared.

2. The python-dll.

3. The pure python modules needed to run the app. The byte-code for these modules is always packed into a zip-archive.

4. Compiled python-extension modules.

5. Supporting dlls, if any.

The bundle-files option determines how these files are packed together for your application. This is explained with a script test_sqlite.py that simply contains this code:

import sqlite3
print(sqlite3)

The command to build the exe-file is:

py2exe.build_exe test_sqlite.py -c --bundle-files <option>

The -c option specifies to create a compressed zip-archive.

--bundle-files 3 is the simplest way. These files will be created in a dist subdirectory, about 8 MB total size:

test_sqlite.exe
_bz2.pyd
_ctypes.pyd
_hashlib.pyd
_lzma.pyd
_socket.pyd
_sqlite3.pyd
_ssl.pyd
_win32sysloader.pyd
pyexpat.pyd
python34.dll
pywintypes34.dll
select.pyd
sqlite3.dll
unicodedata.pyd
win32api.pyd
win32evtlog.pyd

The zip-archive is appended to the test_sqlite.exe file itself, which has a size of 1.5 MB in this case.

--bundle-files 2 will include all the Python extensions into the appended zip-archive; they are loaded via special code at runtime without being unpacked to the file-system. The files in the dist directory now are these:

test_sqlite.exe
python34.dll
sqlite3.dll

--bundle-files 1 will additionally pack the python-dll into the zip-archive:

test_sqlite.exe
sqlite3.dll

--bundle-files 0 now finally creates a real single-file executable of 6 MB:

test_sqlite.exe

If you are building several related executables that you plan to distribute together, it may make sense to specify a zip-archive shared by all the exes with the --library libname option. The executables will then become quite small (about 25 kB), since nearly all code will be in the separate shared archive.

Note that not all applications will work with ``bundle-files`` set to 0 or 1. Be sure to test them.

Bugs

Building isapi extensions is not supported: I don’t use them so I will not implement this.

The modulefinder does not yet support PEP420 implicit namespace packages.