An example method to package a python desktop app on windows

Packaging Python desktop applications in Windows can be painful.

There are number of third party tools which can make this task relatively easy. If you can get by using one of these, go for it. Unfortunately, each of these tools usually need a little help to make them work.

Probably the easiest to use. For the most part you can simply call pyinstaller myapp and it will work. I was happy with this method untill recently the .exe files produced by it started getting quarantined by Crowd Strike on my users computers. Since disabling Crowd Strike is not an option I had to look for other methods.

This requires a little extra work. I had trouble getting file assocations to work properly. Though, to be fair I only spent a few hours trying to debug it.

This tool is differenet from PyInstaller and CXFreeze in that it produces an installer with NSIS.

The embeddable version of Python is stripped down and isolated from the system registry. Checkout the python docs: 3.8. Embedded Distribution, andownload it here.

I wanted to use pip to ease the installation and maintenance of packages. Unfortunately embedded python does not come with pip support. We can install pip we just need to do a little work:

1. Extract python36.zip to a folder titled python36.

2. Modify the python36._pth file which overrides sys.path meaning that the registry and enviroment variables will be ignored. You can read more .pth files in the Python Docs at 3.5. Finding modules. Edit your python36._pth to look like:

   lib/site-packages
   python36
   .
   import site

3. Install pip with get-pip.py which you can download from from here. Ensure you are in the correct folder when you run this command, or use the absolute path to the Python executable:

   C:\Users\tarre\code\python-package-example\python-3.6.4-embed-win32\python.exe get-pip.py

Once pip is installed we can use pip as normal. Just be careful to call it from the embedded executable. It is probably safest to use its absolute path. For example:

C:\Users\tarre\code\python-package-example\python-3.6.4-embed-win32\python.exe -m pip install <packagename>

I have provided two barebones demo apps in this distro to demonstrate console and GUI apps, they are very creatively titled demo_console, and demo_pyqt. Note that the demo apps utilizes entry_points which you can read about here, here, and here.

C:\Users\tarre\code\python-package-example\python-3.6.4-embed-win32\python.exe -m pip install C:\Users\tarre\code\python-package-example\demo_pyqt

C:\Users\tarre\code\python-package-example\python-3.6.4-embed-win32\python.exe -m pip install C:\Users\tarre\code\python-package-example\demo_console

The Python docs alluded to two different methods to launch python applications but they do not provide any examples.

We can create a batch file to call the app.

We can create windows shortcut.

I think this is the most interesting method. We can write a bit of C/C++ to create a custom executable that simply calls Py_Main and passes a few arguments.

The benefits of this include:

• Custom Icon, and application metadata
• Easy file assocations
• Processes are unique and do not display as Python

Using CPython’s Embeddable Zip File

custom-python-launcher

Distribute a Windows Python app with Inno Setup