PyInstaller, spec file, ImportError: No module named 'blah'

Question

I am trying to build a python script via PyInstaller. I have used the following commands to configure, generate a spec file, and build:

wget pyinstaller.zip, extracted it, python Configure.py, etc, then:

python pyinstaller/Makespec.py --onefile myscript.py
python pyinstaller/Build.py myscript.spec 

Here is the spec file it generated:

# -*- mode: python -*-
a = Analysis([os.path.join(HOMEPATH,'support/_mountzlib.py'), os.path.join(HOMEPATH,'support/useUnicode.py'), 'icinga.py'],
             pathex=['/home/user/projects/icinga_python/releases/v2.1'])
pyz = PYZ(a.pure)
exe = EXE( pyz,
          a.scripts,
          a.binaries,
          a.zipfiles,
          a.datas,
          name=os.path.join('dist', 'myscript'),
          debug=False,
          strip=False,
          upx=True,
          console=1 )

This built an executable file in dist/ directory. When trying to run this file, I get the following:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 12, in <module>
  File "/home/user/projects/myscript/releases/v2.1/pyinstaller/iu.py", line 455, in importHook
    raise ImportError, "No module named %s" % fqname
ImportError: No module named mysql

If I moved this executable into the directory of the actual Python code, it gave different results:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 12, in <module>
  File "/home/user/projects/myscript/releases/v2.1/pyinstaller/iu.py", line 436, in importHook
    mod = _self_doimport(nm, ctx, fqname)
  File "/home/user/projects/myscript/releases/v2.1/pyinstaller/iu.py", line 521, in doimport
    exec co in mod.__dict__
  File "CLUSTER/mysql/icingasql.py", line 13, in <module>
    import urllib2
  File "/home/user/projects/myscript/releases/v2.1/pyinstaller/iu.py", line 455, in importHook
    raise ImportError, "No module named %s" % fqname
ImportError: No module named urllib2

In the ... pyinstaller docs I see that --onefile is the option I need/want, but for some reason not everything is being compiled in.

The script is not really including anything fancy, just little quick modules I wrote for sql statements, and parsing certain websites.

Answer 1

This error can ocurre when you have dynamic imports in your code. In that case, pyinstaller don't include those packages in exe file. In that case you can:

1. Add unused import of those packages in your code
2. Tell pyinstaller to include it

One file option does not change anything in running your code. If you create --onefile exe all files created by pyinstaller are packed to exe file, and unpacked to local temp every time you run exe.