py2exe questions

[Doug Stell]

I have 2 questions about py2exe or any similar utility.

1. Is it possible to create a single Windows executable that does not
blow out to a folder full of files and can be called from scripts
using command line arguments?

2. If the above can be done, it is possible to hide parts of the
Python source code from users? These users are software developers,
but we don't want them to see how the code does what it does.

thanks, doug

[Grant Edwards]

On 2006-11-03, Doug Stell <ce*******@mchsi.comwrote:

I have 2 questions about py2exe or any similar utility.

1. Is it possible to create a single Windows executable that does not
blow out to a folder full of files and can be called from scripts
using command line arguments?

The default operation of py2exe already meets requirement 1b:
an executable that can be called from scripts using command
line arguments.

--
Grant Edwards grante Yow! Now I'm concentrating
at on a specific tank battle
visi.com toward the end of World
War II!

[Larry Bates]

Doug Stell wrote:

I have 2 questions about py2exe or any similar utility.

1. Is it possible to create a single Windows executable that does not
blow out to a folder full of files and can be called from scripts
using command line arguments?

2. If the above can be done, it is possible to hide parts of the
Python source code from users? These users are software developers,
but we don't want them to see how the code does what it does.

thanks, doug

py2exe reduce the number of files you need to distribute down to 4:

msvcr71.dll
w9xpopen.exe (Windows/98 support)
library.zip (all .pyo, .pyd, and .dll files)
applcation.exe
I does not however go to great lengths to "hide" the code from
someone with time/expertise that wants to get to your code
(but then just about anything can be disassembled). The compiled
..pyo files are just placed in library.zip. At least it doesn't
send your .py files along.

-Larry

[Thomas Heller]

Larry Bates schrieb:

Doug Stell wrote:

>I have 2 questions about py2exe or any similar utility.

1. Is it possible to create a single Windows executable that does not
blow out to a folder full of files and can be called from scripts
using command line arguments?

2. If the above can be done, it is possible to hide parts of the
Python source code from users? These users are software developers,
but we don't want them to see how the code does what it does.

thanks, doug

py2exe reduce the number of files you need to distribute down to 4:

msvcr71.dll
w9xpopen.exe (Windows/98 support)
library.zip (all .pyo, .pyd, and .dll files)
applcation.exe

It can easily be reduced to 2 files by 'embedding' the libray.zip
into the exe (use the zipfile=None option), and deleting the w9xpopen.exe
if you don't need win98 support.

I does not however go to great lengths to "hide" the code from
someone with time/expertise that wants to get to your code
(but then just about anything can be disassembled). The compiled
.pyo files are just placed in library.zip. At least it doesn't
send your .py files along.

Thomas

[robert]

Thomas Heller wrote:

Larry Bates schrieb:

>Doug Stell wrote:

>>I have 2 questions about py2exe or any similar utility.

1. Is it possible to create a single Windows executable that does not
blow out to a folder full of files and can be called from scripts
using command line arguments?

2. If the above can be done, it is possible to hide parts of the
Python source code from users? These users are software developers,
but we don't want them to see how the code does what it does.

thanks, doug

py2exe reduce the number of files you need to distribute down to 4:

msvcr71.dll
w9xpopen.exe (Windows/98 support)
library.zip (all .pyo, .pyd, and .dll files)
applcation.exe

It can easily be reduced to 2 files by 'embedding' the libray.zip
into the exe (use the zipfile=None option), and deleting the w9xpopen.exe
if you don't need win98 support.

and finally you can use Python2.3 to avoid msvcr71.dll

-robert

[Jerry]

The McMillan (sp?) Python Installer has recently been resurrected as
well, though now, it is just called PyInstaller and can be found at
http://pyinstaller.python-hosting.com/

It allows you to create a one file distributable without the need to go
back to Python2.3.

Despite what everyone is saying though, I believe that any and all
solutions will require that the byte-code be extracted to some
directory before being run. It's not as though you are REALLY
compiling the language to native code. It's just a bootstrap around
the Python interpreter and your code plus any modules that it needs to
run.

--
Jerry

[Fredrik Lundh]

Jerry wrote:

Despite what everyone is saying though, I believe that any and all
solutions will require that the byte-code be extracted to some
directory before being run.

the Python interpreter doesn't really care what you believe, though;
it's perfectly capable of executing byte code that's stored in memory
buffers.

</F>

[Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch]

In <11*********************@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.c om>, Jerry wrote:

Despite what everyone is saying though, I believe that any and all
solutions will require that the byte-code be extracted to some
directory before being run.

It's not Python bytecode. The problem is native libraries which are hard
to run from memory without a real file backing it on some platforms. A
pure Python program/package should be possible without temporary files.

Ciao,
Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch

[Thomas Heller]

Marc 'BlackJack' Rintsch schrieb:

In <11*********************@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.c om>, Jerry wrote:

>Despite what everyone is saying though, I believe that any and all
solutions will require that the byte-code be extracted to some
directory before being run.

It's not Python bytecode. The problem is native libraries which are hard
to run from memory without a real file backing it on some platforms. A
pure Python program/package should be possible without temporary files.

py2exe even achives this on Windows. See http://www.py2exe.org/old/ ,
and look at the section named "The bundle option". py2exe is able to
load Python extensions (.pyd and .dll) from the zip-archive *without*
extracting them to the file system at all. It doesn't work for the C
runtime library msvcr71.dll though.

Thomas

[timmy]

Doug Stell wrote:

I have 2 questions about py2exe or any similar utility.

1. Is it possible to create a single Windows executable that does not
blow out to a folder full of files and can be called from scripts
using command line arguments?

py2exe can most certainly do this.

>
2. If the above can be done, it is possible to hide parts of the
Python source code from users? These users are software developers,
but we don't want them to see how the code does what it does.

thanks, doug

you can make a single exe in py2exe which would make it harder to
disassemble, but there's no such thing in the software world that makes
it impossible.