I'm using PyGObject/GTK+ with Python3.7 on Windows and is worried about how to package my app. With official Python ecosystem, it's easy to use freezers and venvs. However, the PyGObject and GTK+ on Windows requires the MingW environment to run.
Does this mean that I have to package the entire MingW, along with GTK+? How should I freeze the app?
Since no one cares soon enough, I'll report my findings here. The short answer, as of the date I write this post, is: The PyGObject eco-system is not commercial-ready on Windows, although nothing stops you from shipping a functional app.
The deal-breaker is the lack of functional freezers on Windows for PyGOBject. So you can't really ship a closed-source commercial product with it (although one could argue that the entire Python eco-system is not made for that). The freezers that I tried:
PyInstaller right now does not install with the officially recommended msys/MingGW universe; Even after building PyInstaller from source, the frozen .exe crashes with complaints about missing modules. Below is the crash report from a hello-world app.$ app.exe
[8340] mod is NULL - structTraceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/Apps/msys64/mingw64/lib/python3.7/struct.py", line 13, in <module>
from _struct import *
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named '_struct'
[8340] mod is NULL - pyimod02_archiveTraceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/Apps/msys64/mingw64/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pyinstaller-3.5-py3.7.egg/PyInstaller/loader/pyimod02_archive.py", line 28, in <module>
import struct
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'struct'
[8340] mod is NULL - pyimod03_importersTraceback (most recent call last):
File "C:/Apps/msys64/mingw64/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pyinstaller-3.5-py3.7.egg/PyInstaller/loader/pyimod03_importers.py", line 24, in <module>
from pyimod02_archive import ArchiveReadError, ZlibArchiveReader
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pyimod02_archive'
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "site-packages/pyinstaller-3.5-py3.7.egg/PyInstaller/loader/pyiboot01_bootstrap.py", line 15, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'pyimod03_importers'
[8340] Failed to execute script pyiboot01_bootstrap
cx_Freeze, another prominent alternative, does not build/install on MingW, either. You end up with gcc woes, no matter how many gcc variants you install. py2exe is now abandonware since Python 3.4.Since a PyGObject app still runs with MinGW python, it's not impossible to ship such an app for Windows. But that means you'll go with the big baggage and figure out a way to pack everything yourself. Let alone maintain the whole mess. Mind you that the procedure will be different on Mac if your app is cross-platform. PyInstaller works on Mac according to my test.
QuodLibet provides an example of how to ship an open-source software based on PyGObject. Unfortunately, as of today, the upstream's packaging procedure fails at the build.sh run on my Windows 10:
copying data/quodlibet.zsh -> E:\_dev\quodlibet\win_installer\_build_root\mingw64\share\zsh\vendor-completions\_quodlibet
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "E:/_dev/quodlibet/win_installer/misc/depcheck.py", line 141, in <module>
main(sys.argv)
File "E:/_dev/quodlibet/win_installer/misc/depcheck.py", line 130, in main
libs = get_things_to_delete(sys.prefix)
File "E:/_dev/quodlibet/win_installer/misc/depcheck.py", line 108, in get_things_to_delete
for lib in get_dependencies(path):
File "E:/_dev/quodlibet/win_installer/misc/depcheck.py", line 66, in get_dependencies
data = data.decode("utf-8")
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xa3 in position 72: invalid start byte
This turns out to be an easy fix: locale issue on non-UTF8 Windows.
A trivial patch would be replacing "utf-8" with locale.getdefaultlocale(). After that, the build succeeds.
However, the global distribution issues remain challenging:
msys2 build system basically drags the entire GNOME universe and much of the Python universe to your machine, while you may already have a Python environment on your native Windows. It proves hard to cherry-pick the necessary dependencies among this whole pile of stuff.