Problem trying to freeze an executable which imports distutils modules (directly or indirectly)

cx_freeze_and_distutils.md

cxFreeze and distutils

Problem

When trying to freeze a script which imports any distutils module (for example, distutils.dist), the script fails at runtime with an exception like this:

>   from distutils import dist, sysconfig
E   ImportError: cannot import name dist

(In my case, the error was raised by matplotlib, which tries to import distutils.dist).

The problem is easy to reproduce:

$ virtualenv myenv
$ source myenv/bin/activate
$ pip install cx_freeze

# contents of setup.py
from cx_Freeze import setup, Executable

build_exe_options = {}

setup(
    name="foo",
    version="0.1",
    description="My app",
    options={"build_exe": build_exe_options},
    executables=[Executable("foo_main.py", base=None)],
)

# contents of foo_main.py
import distutils.dist

$ python setup.py build

Running the produced executable should raise the same error (tested with cx-freeze 4.3.4).

This problem happens because distutils does not install all its modules into the virtualenv, it only creates a package with some magic code in the __init__ file to import its submodules dynamically. This is a problem to cx-freeze's static module analysis, which complains during the build command that it can't find distutils modules.

Workaround

The workaround used was to tell cx-freeze to exclude distutils and add the package from the original interpreter (not from the virtualenv) manually.

# contents of setup.py
from cx_Freeze import setup, Executable

import distutils
import opcode
import os

# opcode is not a virtualenv module, so we can use it to find the stdlib; this is the same
# trick used by distutils itself it installs itself into the virtualenv
distutils_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(opcode.__file__), 'distutils')
build_exe_options = {'include_files': [(distutils_path, 'distutils')], "excludes": ["distutils"]}

setup(
    name="foo",
    version="0.1",
    description="My app",
    options={"build_exe": build_exe_options},
    executables=[Executable("foo_main.py", base=None)],
)

@nicoddemus && @bobatsar:

thanks for the hint. That helped me alot +1

for completeness' sake..
This is the setup.py I used:

import sys
from cx_Freeze import setup, Executable

#stuff to use distutils from outside the virtual environment
import distutils
import opcode
import os
distutils_path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(opcode.file), 'distutils')
#end

base = None
if sys.platform == 'win32':
base = 'Win32GUI'

#with the tag 'include_files' we tell cx_freeze to include the distutils from outside our python environment
#with the tag 'exclude' we explicitly exclude the distutils inside our python environment
options = {
'build_exe': {
'includes': 'atexit',
'include_files': [(distutils_path, 'lib/distutils')],
'packages': ['pkg_resources._vendor.packaging', 'idna', 'dumbdbm', 'ftrack_action_handler'],
'excludes': ['distutils']
}
}

executables = [
Executable('main.py', base=base)
]

setup(name='ftrack-connect',
version='0.1',
description='ftrack-connect client to communicate with FTrack-Server',
options=options,
executables=executables
)

Thanks for this beautiful workaround! Saved me days of debugging.

cx_Freeze 6 has been release. The workaround is no longer needed either.

Confirming that I have cx_freexe 6, and I still needed this code! Thanks!

Same here! (version 6.2)

[email protected] with python3.6 in a virtualenv still required the workaround.

@jeffrothkirch @NeroVanbiervliet @VictoryShima
You can take a look in my comment at: marcelotduarte/cx_Freeze#443
And suggest any modification to sample to test it. I'll try to solve this for 6.2 release.