Options¶

What you need to understand about Distutils:¶

The Distutils module is part of the standard python distribution. Distutils is used by python module developers to package and distribute new modules. The setup syntax py2exe uses is inherited from distutils. (If you choose the default Windows installation for python, distutils can be found at: C:/Program Files/Python##/Lib/distutils/). The setup function of Distutil recognizes specific keywords, which are also available when running py2exe. The following is a list of some more useful distutils keywords

keyword	description
Data files	list of "data" files that you are going to need to run your executable such as .pngs, .jpgs

Py2exe extends Distutils setup keywords¶

In addition to the standard distutils setup keywords, the following py2exe keywords specify what and how to build.

keyword	description
console	list of scripts to convert into console exes
windows	list of scripts to convert into GUI exes
service	list of module names containing win32 service classes
com_server	list of module names containing com server classes
ctypes_com_server	list of module names containing com server classes
zipfile	name of shared zipfile to generate; may specify a subdirectory; defaults to 'library.zip'. If `zipfile` is set to `None`, the files will be bundled within the executable instead of 'library.zip'.
options	dictionary { "py2exe": { "opt1": val1, "opt2": val2, ... } }

The options dictionary of py2exe¶

The option keyword takes the following set of dictionary key: value pairs. The dictionary "key" names and the "value" types are listed in the table below.

key	value
unbuffered	if true, use unbuffered binary stdout and stderr
optimize	string or int of optimization level (0, 1, or 2) 0 = don’t optimize (generate .pyc) 1 = normal optimization (like python -O) 2 = extra optimization (like python -OO) See https://docs.python.org/2.7/distutils/apiref.html#module-distutils.util for more info.
includes	list of module names to include
packages	list of packages to include with subpackages
ignores	list of modules to ignore if they are not found
excludes	list of module names to exclude
dll_excludes	list of dlls to exclude
dist_dir	directory in which to build the final files
typelibs	list of gen_py generated typelibs to include
compressed	(boolean) create a compressed zipfile
xref	(boolean) create and show a module cross reference
bundle_files	bundle dlls in the zipfile or the exe. Valid values for `bundle_files` are: 3 = don't bundle (default) 2 = bundle everything but the Python interpreter 1 = bundle everything, including the Python interpreter
skip_archive	(boolean) do not place Python bytecode files in an archive, put them directly in the file system
ascii	(boolean) do not automatically include encodings and codecs
custom-boot-script	Python file that will be run when setting up the runtime environment

Example:

setup(
        windows=['trypyglet.py'],
        options={
                "py2exe":{
                        "unbuffered": True,
                        "optimize": 2,
                        "excludes": ["email"]
                }
        }
)

For more information enter the following at the python command line:

>>> from distutils.core import setup
>>> help(setup)

The bundle option¶

The --bundle <level> or -b <level> command line switch will create fewer files because binary extensions, runtime dlls, and even the Python-dll itself are bundled into the executable itself, or inside the library-archive if you prefer that. See Single file executables for details.

The ascii option¶

To prevent unicode encoding errors, py2exe by default includes the codecs module and the encodings package. If you are sure your program never implicitly or explicitly has to convert between unicode and ascii strings this can be prevented by the --ascii or -a command line switch.