Pyinstaller But Keeping .py Files Upgradeable

I've managed to package my PyQt4 app as a 'standalone' application on windows, it works. However this application can upgrade itself, which is done by replacing the actual code wri

Solution 1:

You can change the spec file to specifically not include files by name (when building lists), then make sure these files are included - I'd have to check whether there's an option to include but not compile.

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I've not tried this myself (I use pyInstaller at work but don't have it set up on my home PC) but this is the sort of thing I think should be ok:

a = Analysis(['main.py'])
excluded = ['myfile0.py', 'myfile1.py', 'myfile2.py']
a.scripts = [script from script in a.scripts if script not in excluded]
pyz = PYZ(a.pure)
exe = EXE(a.scripts, pyz, name="main.exe", exclude_binaries=1)
dist = COLLECT(exe, a.binaries, excluded, name="dist")

Solution 2:

Actually it's more like this :

a = Analysis(['main.py'])
excluded = ['pathto\\myfile0.py', 'pathto\\myfile1.py', 'pathto\\myfile2.py']
a.scripts = [script from script in a.scripts if script[1] not in excluded]
pyz = PYZ(a.pure)
excluded_files_collect = [(f.split('\\')[-1],f,'DATA') for f in excluded]
exe = EXE(a.scripts, pyz, name="main.exe", exclude_binaries=1)
dist = COLLECT(exe, a.binaries, excluded_files_collect , name="dist")

As script is actually a tuple with the form :

('myfile0.py', 'pathto\\myfile0.py', 'PYSOURCE')

You may also have to prevent files from being included in PYZ, refer to the pyz toc to see if they get included, I managed to exlude them using excludes=[myfile0] in Analysis().

Solution 3:

I think the embedded interpreter in the executable will still search for .py files in the same directory and/or PYTHONPATH, py2exe uses a zip file for native python components, iirc pyinstaller embeds all of them in the executable, maybe there is an option to keep a zip like in py2exe (or not add them in the spec), then try to run the application without the files and monitor file accesses with procmon.

Solution 4:

pyinstaller provides the --exclude option for your use case , and it is also possible to set the module or package you want to ignore using the excludes parameter of Analysis() in the .spec file .