CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpy2exe
stensootla
stensootla

Reputation: 14855

How to put files in folders using py2exe.

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!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1272

Answers (2)

Ryan G
Ryan G

Reputation: 9560

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

Upvotes: 0

jadkik94
jadkik94

Reputation: 7068

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.

Upvotes: 1

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