py2exe - create one EXE

[Fredrik Lundh]

James Carrol wrote:

> I like that you can automatically invoke NSIS and create an installer,
> but I thought the question was how can all of the libraries be in a
> single runnable program executable (not a program that installs, but
> the program that you wrote.)

the wiki recipe does exactly that -- it creates one EXE, which *temporarily*
unpacks the components that have be in separate files for Windows to find
them.  when you terminate the program, the files are removed.

> I don't think you can do this, because (unless you have your own
> version of python that statically links with all of the module's
> native code that you need) you would have to have some code that loads
> DLLs that are packed in your executable at the moment that the import
> happens for that module.

there are commerical libraries available that overrides Win32 API calls
so they fetch data from resources rather than disk files.  but given that
disks are fast and disk space is cheap, it's hardly worth the effort.

</F>