CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonpyinstaller
Eidern
Eidern

Reputation: 68

get the path of the executed file once "compiled" with pyinstaller

I know there are a lot of answers on this subject, but no one works once you compile a script in an executable.

In my python script, I create a file within the same directory of the script. to get the path of the current dir I use pathlib

basepath = Path(__file__).parent
filename='myfile'
filepath=os.path.join(basepath, filename)

if I print the directory I get the file wrote in the good directory and everything works fine within python (i.e desktop/myname/myscriptdir/myfile)

but once I "compile" with pyinstaller with --onefile, if I launch the executable, the directory will be like /var/folders/nr/w0698dl96j39_fq33lqd8pk80000gn/T/_MEIP12KxC/myfile

believed me, I tried a lot of various method (abspath, os.realpath..)to get the current dir, no one worked fine once in an executable file.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1184

Answers (1)

Alexander
Alexander

Reputation: 17344

When you compile an app using pyinstaller with the --onefile or -F flag, the file that it creates is actually an archive file, like a .zip file.

When you execute that file it launches a process that extracts itself into a temporary folder somewhere in your OS filesystem. This is the path that is reported when you use the __file__ variable in the compiled application.

It then continues to launch your application from there and the temporary directory becomes the runtime durectory for the duration of the apps life. When the app is finally closed it deletes the temporary runtime directory on it's way out.

Since this is the case there are alternatives.

To get the current working directory during runtime use:
path = '.' 
#or
path = os.getcwd()
To get the path to the compiled executable file during runtime:
path = sys.executable

Upvotes: 2

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