py2exe - generate single executable file

Question

I thought I heard that py2exe was able to do this, but I never figured it out. Has anyone successfully done this? Can I see your setup.py file, and what command line optio

Answer 1

The way to do this using py2exe is to use the bundle_files option in your setup.py file. For a single file you will want to set bundle_files to 1, compressed to True, and set the zipfile option to None. That way it creates one compressed file for easy distribution.

Here is a more complete description of the bundle_file option quoted directly from the py2exe site*

Using "bundle_files" and "zipfile"

An easier (and better) way to create single-file executables is to set bundle_files to 1 or 2, and to set zipfile to None. This approach does not require extracting files to a temporary location, which provides much faster program startup.

Valid values for bundle_files are:

• 3 (default) don't bundle
• 2 bundle everything but the Python interpreter
• 1 bundle everything, including the Python interpreter

If zipfile is set to None, the files will be bundle within the executable instead of library.zip.

Here is a sample setup.py:

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe, sys, os

sys.argv.append('py2exe')

setup(
    options = {'py2exe': {'bundle_files': 1, 'compressed': True}},
    windows = [{'script': "single.py"}],
    zipfile = None,
)

Answer 2

As the other poster mention, py2exe, will generate an executable + some libraries to load. You can also have some data to add to your program.

Next step is to use an installer, to package all this into one easy-to-use installable/unistallable program.

I have used InnoSetup ( http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php ) with delight for several years and for commercial programs, so I heartily recommend it.

Answer 3

I recently used py2exe to create an executable for post-review for sending reviews to ReviewBoard.

This was the setup.py I used

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe

setup(console=['post-review'])

It created a directory containing the exe file and the libraries needed. I don't think it is possible to use py2exe to get just a single .exe file. If you need that you will need to first use py2exe and then use some form of installer to make the final executable.

One thing to take care of is that any egg files you use in your application need to be unzipped, otherwise py2exe can't include them. This is covered in the py2exe docs.