ok so i've used iexpress a few times without a problem. i created a nice little program for my buddies and i and i'm now in the process of creating a installation package for it. i like iexpress cause it makes it easy and has the license agreement window n whatnot.
ok so program is made. using windows & iexpress i attempt to make the installer, problem is there is one folder that contains an item i need and it needs to be in that folder directory when the installed program needs to run. Problem: i can select files but not folders for the list of items to be in the installer.
Question: how do i include the folder in the install package so there doesnt need to be a few more additional steps for the installation.
i have thought about zipping it, but there isnt a way (that i know of) to add a extract command after the initial install extract.
i figure installers are to programs what instruction booklets are to Ikea furniture so i figured this would be the best place for help. tyvm
iexpress doesn't let you include folders, but you can include a batch file, which may create folders and copy files to the respective folder. To run a batch file, specify cmd /c IncludedBatchFile.bat under Install Program in the iexpress wizard.
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I am doing an application in Excel and I'd like to use python language. I've seen a pretty cool library called xlwings, but to run it a user need to have python installed.
Is there any possibility to prepare this kind of application that will be launch from a PC without Python?
Any suggestion are welcome!
A small workaround could be to package your application with cx_freeze or pyinstaller. Then it can run on a machine without installing python. The downside is of course that the program tend to be a bit bulky in size.
no. you must need install a python and for interpreting the python function etc.
It is possible using xlloop. This is a customized client-server approach, where the client is an excel .xll which must be installed on client's machine.
The server can be written in many languages, including python, and of course it must be launched on a server that has python installed. Currently the .xll is available only for 32 bits.
This might not be exactly what you're looking for (i.e.- "without python"), but you could ship it as a virtualenv .zip folder with all the necessary packages and respective python installation included in the folder... and also include a run.command bash executable inside the folder that the user can click on to run your program. You'll have to tell the user (inside a README.txt or something) how to enable the executable... For a particular application mine looked like...
Please complete the following steps after installation of MyApplication.zip:
Step 1: Move the MyApplication folder to your Desktop.
Step 2: Open your Terminal in Go then Applications then Utilities.
Step 3: In the Terminal, paste cd ~/Desktop/MyApplication
then press Enter.
Step 4: Then, paste chmod +x run.command
then press Enter.
From now on, clicking the “run” file in MyApplication will run the application.
If clicking the “run” file still doesn’t work, then do…
Click Ok on the popup then Open System Preferences then Security & Privacy
then Click on Open Anyway button then Click Open button on the popup.
NOTE: Please do not move or delete the MyApplication folder, or any of its files.
Then my run.command executable looked like the following:
cd ~/Desktop/MyApplication
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/site-packages:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/site-packages/aeosa:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/lib-old:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/lib-tk:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/Extras/lib/python:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/plat-mac:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7/plat-darwin:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python2.7:$HOME/Desktop/MyApplication/lib/python27.zip
source bin/activate
python main.py
Three things are important here:
1) In run.command, I first change directory into the virtualenv I created for this project. I'm not trying to be dynamic here, since this is all just a quick hack of a solution, so as part of the README.txt, I simply tell the user to put the folder they downloaded onto their desktop. Otherwise, the cd command wouldn't work.
2) I set the client's PATH variable, separating entries with colons. You can see a list of the paths you'd need using a quick check on your computer...
import sys
for path in sys.path:
print path
3) I then call source bin/activate to activate the virtualenv.
4) I then execute my main.py file, which is in the top level of my virtualenv, along with run.command.
5) I only wrote this bash file for Mac OS X, so I don't know how it would translate to windows PCs. I think the only thing that'd change is that the path literals would need to use backslashes instead of forward slashes, but again, I haven't done this for windows so I'm uncertain.
Read more about setting up a virtualenv here: https://virtualenv.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html
Finally, note that you will not be able to send your final, working .zip folder over most email services, since they tend to prevent people from sending executables back and forth, so you'll have to use a service like Dropbox or something to send it to people.
I am "compiling" my Python application for Windows with PyInstaller 2.1. I initially tried using onefile mode, but onefile takes a long time to startup (decompressing wx and matplotlib). With the onedir mode it's pretty fast (only a little bit slower than native python).
So I want to use onedir mode for faster startup times, but for the end-user it's difficult to find the actual *.exe file inside the huge amount of files located in the main directory (there are 98 files including the actual executable and it's manifest).
I want to make sure a non tech-savvy user can easily "double-click" the executable and work with this program (ease and portability) without a long disclaimer to "just ignore" the 97 other files there.
Is it possible to move all those "distracting" files into a subfolder? Or are there other ways to make it easy for the end-user to run this program?
maybe you could use onedir. The resulting folder you can put anywhere and create a shortcut to the user where it is more comfortable.
Easiest way to reduce the number of files created in --onedir mode would be to create a virtual environment and install only the necessary modules.
You could use some software to pack it into a one-file installer, such as Inno setup.
You could also try to delete some files one by one (if the executable fails just undelete it). I figured out that almost half of the files can be deleted with the executable working fine.
Download Inno Setup from here.
Hi i want to build an install creator for my programs in Python.
I have made code for the information gathering, PATHS, FILES, PICS etc.
Now i need to:
Compress the files for the program.
make a config file with install paths ect.
make code for the INSTALLER (i have that to)
Finally i need to "pack" it all in an .exe file that will run the first window in my INSTALLER CODE, so that it will work as my own custom made installer.
Does anybody have any idea how to go about this EASY??
My biggest problem is to collect it all in ONE .exe file that will run my windows(TK code) and of course install my program when clicked...
I have a few ideas how to go about it, BUT in my head these ideas seem to be BIG and NOT EASY, so need ideas for easier solutions.
Update. If i have a program build in python(Tkinter) that will gather the information and save this info as a config file. Then i can build a program that can read this information and extract files ect. accordingly to the info. But how will i combine these configfiles/programs in ONE .exe file that when clicked will run MY program and then accordingly extract my files to the paths in config file. And last use my own icon for the single .exe
If you want to have everything in one exe file, its code needs to be aware of it's content and extract them. This is a problem that has been solved by various tools, eg. see this SO question and its answers.
Hi!I made a chess engine in python which i then compiled to .exe using py2exe. The problem is that it doesn't look very neat when i have all the strange files gathered together in the same folder (dist). I'd like to make a new folder inside the dist folder that contains all the helper files, so all my dist folder contains is the folder holding the helper files and the main launch application. However, i can't simply copy the helper files to a new folder, as the computer doesn't find them then and raises an error.
How can it be solved? Also, i'm using inno setup to make an installation, but i can't figure out how to find a solution there, either.
Thank you very much!
There is a feature in the configuration of py2exe that allows you to bundle all the Python files in a single library.zip file. That would considerably reduce the amount of files in the root directory, but there will still remain some files, regardless of all that.
These files are generally DLL files, at least from what I saw with GUI applications. You cannot remove these, because they are required to launch the application. A workaround to this problem is to create a batch file that will run the actual program which can be in child directory. The point is that these files should either be in the same directory as the executable, or the current working directory, or a path in the PATH environment variable. At least it's the case of most of these. Another approach might be a batch file which will modify the PATH variable or cd to another directory and run the file afterwards
I never tried to do it, so it might break some things for you. Anyway, IMO the best approach is to create an installer and add shortcuts and you won't have to bother with the user messing with these files.
Try using pyinstaller instead. It's easy to use, and will compile your PythonLib and all necessary python files to a stand alone EXE. So you don't have to worry about the having a mess of files in your dist file. (just one single exe).
And if you have other external files, such as databases, text files, csv's. etc... you can set them up to deploy in exactly the fashion you want from the inno setup [Files] section.
I wrote a detailed explanation on this yesterday, so check out this link:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/13259452/1339024
--Edit--
*Make sure you use pyinstaller 1.5 , as the 2.x version doesn't exactly work the same
Hi as a python newbie I have written a small python application that can convert an excel worksheet into a sqlite database table. Its not a terribly complex application but it does make use of external modules/package like xlrd (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlrd) which I had to download and install when writing my app.
Now that is all done I would like to distribute it amongst my friends, all windows users, while they have python on their machines, they may or may not have the xlrd modules.
I would like to package my app, make sure it includes everything that it needs to run, and share the final .zip file with my friends so they can use the application. Is there a good tutorial that covers how to package a python application, with all the necessary external modules/packages, so that another windows user, can easily run my application.
I keep hearing about disutils, can anyone point me to some good tutorials, or any other python packaging tutorials that show how to get everything into a simple easy to distribute file.
Many thanks
Note: I also want to include the sqlite database file with my application, so the end user doesn't have to worry about anything
First download Pyinstaller and save it somewhere. Then, if you're running Python 2.6 or 2.7 go and install pywin32.
Go create a directory for your output file.
Open Command prompt and enter the fallowing:
python path/to/pyinstaller/pyinstall.py file/to/be/converted.py --onefile
If you want to add an icon, add the --icon argument.
If you want it to hide the CMD window add the --windowed argument.
So if you wanted it to use an icon and hide the CMD window it would look like this:
python path/to/pyinstaller/pyinstall.py file/to/be/converted.py --onefile --icon="path/to/icon.ico" --windowed
The --onefile argument makes the saves everything into one file, without it, the output would be would be a lot of files.
The output is saved in the "dist" folder in the directory it was using.
After you convert the python script in to an .exe, put it in a .zip file along with any other files you need (in your case the squite database file) and you can give it to anyone without them needing to have Python at all.
If you want a program to do this all for you, you can download a program called PTEC.