Prebuilt executables

[atridey]

I think we should make a separate thread since this is a common request. We have a way to use py2app for Mac, but my attempts with pyinstaller and cxfreeze on windows have been unsuccessful. Has anyone else built outside of Mac?

[AnonymouX47]

At the moment, I'm not sure how workable this is for Windows.

I tried PyInstaller with no success... i'll elaborate more soon.

I think the best option for now is for the user to have python installed, install the dependencies and run the script directly.
I sincerly think the installation steps are easy enough to follow.

[atridey]

Have you been getting the same error as I have? I was getting import errors so it kept trying to download off of requirements.txt (which didn't exist in the build directory). Once I added requirements.txt, it downloaded, but still had an import error. Commenting out the code that downloads just showed an import error again. Switching from pyinstaller to cxfreeze did nothing.

I too believe it's easy to install with Python, but prebuilt executables are even easier.

[AnonymouX47]

I tried PyInstaller (using the --onefile option) and encountered an ImportError.
I should note that the 3rd-party libraries were also packaged along.

The import error occured from the pynput library:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "main.py", line 4, in <module>
    from pynput.keyboard import Key, Controller
  File "PyInstaller\loader\pyimod03_importers.py", line 540, in exec_module
  File "pynput\__init__.py", line 40, in <module>
  File "PyInstaller\loader\pyimod03_importers.py", line 540, in exec_module
  File "pynput\keyboard\__init__.py", line 31, in <module>
  File "pynput\_util\__init__.py", line 82, in backend
ImportError
[5644] Failed to execute script main

I went on to inspect the backend() function in "pynput_util__init__.py".
The error seems to be caused by an "hidden" import on line 70:

importlib.import_module('._' + module, package)

and according to PyInstaller's docs here:

Hidden imports can occur when the code is using __import__(), importlib.import_module() or perhaps exec() or eval(). Hidden imports can also occur when an extension module uses the Python/C API to do an import. When this occurs, Analysis can detect nothing. There will be no warnings, only an ImportError at run-time.

From what i understand from the code in backend(), it's trying to load some moudle(s) for platform-dependent back-end support.

[AnonymouX47]

I just found a fix, adding --collect-submodules pynput to the build command ensures the module being imported is also bundled. Thereby fixing the issue.

[atridey]

Strange, it successfully built just a couple of minutes ago (with collect submodules), but I tried doing it in WSL and it's getting an import error. I go back to windows to find that it's now also giving an importerror. I'll clone from scratch and try again.

[AnonymouX47]

@daspartho What say you?

[atridey]

Alright, it magically fixed itself. Anyways, that's good news. We can now have prebuilt releases.

[AnonymouX47]

but I tried doing it in WSL

WSL is a linux subsystem, not windows.

I'll try it on linux and see how it goes... though, i think running the script directly is still better since most recent linux systems come with Python 3.

[atridey]

I do agree with you on that. I also believe anyone willing to use Linux is probably tech savvy enough to install pip and dependencies. Still, prebuilt releases are always nice.

[atridey]

I did not mean to close

[atridey]

but I tried doing it in WSL

WSL is a linux subsystem, not windows.

I'll try it on linux and see how it goes... though, i think running the script directly is still better since most recent linux systems come with Python 3.

I'm well aware of that, I was testing if it worked on Linux but didn't feel like rebooting to get into actual Ubuntu.