Making executable Windows programs

The py2exe Python library is an extension to Python distutils module which converts Python scripts into executable Windows programs, able to run without requiring a Python installation.

Making such an executable program may be a non trivial task when the script dependencies include libraries with data or extensions, such as PyQt4 or guidata and guiqwt. This task has been considerably simplified thanks to the helper functions provided by guidata.disthelpers.

Example

This example is included in guiqwt source package (see the py2exe_example directory).

Simple example script named simpledialog.pyw which is based on guiqwt (and implicitely on guidata):

from guiqwt.plot import ImageDialog
from guiqwt.builder import make

class VerySimpleDialog(ImageDialog):
    def set_data(self, data):
        plot = self.get_plot()
        item = make.trimage(data)
        plot.add_item(item, z=0)
        plot.set_active_item(item)
        plot.replot()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import numpy as np
    from guidata import qapplication
    qapplication()
    dlg = VerySimpleDialog()
    dlg.set_data(np.random.rand(100, 100))
    dlg.exec_()

The setup.py script may be written as the following:

from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe # Patching distutils setup
from guidata.disthelpers import (remove_build_dist, get_default_excludes,
                         get_default_dll_excludes, create_vs2008_data_files,
                         add_modules)

# Removing old build/dist folders
remove_build_dist()

# Including/excluding DLLs and Python modules
EXCLUDES = get_default_excludes()
INCLUDES = []
DLL_EXCLUDES = get_default_dll_excludes()
DATA_FILES = create_vs2008_data_files()

# Configuring/including Python modules
add_modules(('PyQt4', 'guidata', 'guiqwt'), DATA_FILES, INCLUDES, EXCLUDES)

setup(
      options={
               "py2exe": {"compressed": 2, "optimize": 2, 'bundle_files': 1,
                          "includes": INCLUDES, "excludes": EXCLUDES,
                          "dll_excludes": DLL_EXCLUDES,
                          "dist_dir": "dist",},
               },
      data_files=DATA_FILES,
      windows=[{
                "script": "simpledialog.pyw",
                "dest_base": "simpledialog",
                "version": "1.0.0",
                "company_name": u"CEA",
                "copyright": u"Copyright © 2010 CEA - Pierre Raybaut",
                "name": "Simple dialog box",
                "description": "Simple dialog box",
                },],
      zipfile = None,
      )

Make the Windows executable program with the following command:

python setup.py py2exe