Esky not including sub-module

Question

I have a medium-size PyQT5 desktop application that has been working fine with py2app. I want to incorporate Esky so that the app can update itself, but the app terminates during startup (before displaying the main window) with a log entry that says "HelloApp Error" (where "HelloApp" is the name of my application).

I've created a small test case that reproduces the problem that is available at https://github.com/markmont/esky-package-question

The test-case app has the following structure:

HelloApp/
    HelloApp/
        HelloApp.py
        helloform
            __init__.py
    setup.py

setup.py contains:

from esky import bdist_esky
from distutils.core import setup

PY2APP_OPTIONS = {
    'argv_emulation': True,
    'includes': [ 'sip', 'PyQt5', 'helloform' ],
    'qt_plugins': [ '*' ]
    }
ESKY_OPTIONS = {
    "freezer_module": "py2app",
    "freezer_options": PY2APP_OPTIONS,
    "includes": [ 'sip', 'PyQt5', 'helloform' ]
    }
HelloApp = bdist_esky.Executable( "HelloApp/HelloApp.py", gui_only=True )

setup(
    name='HelloApp',
    version = "2014060301",
    data_files=[],
    options = { "bdist_esky": ESKY_OPTIONS },
    scripts=[ HelloApp ]
)

HelloApp.py contains the statement from helloform import Form -- this appears to be what is causing the app to fail to start with the error "HelloApp Error", as if I remove that statement and paste in the contents of helloform/init.py the application starts up and works properly.

Also, if I move everything into a single directory and adjust the paths in setup.py, then the problem does not occur -- Esky finds helloform.py (formerly named helloform/init.py), includes it, and the application starts up and works properly:

HelloApp/
    HelloApp.py
    helloform.py  # formerly ./HelloApp/helloform/__init__.py
    setup.py

...but putting everything in single directory is not a scalable solution for a medium-to-large application.

There are no error messages in the output of python setup.py bdist_esky when the problem occurs, and I have not found the answer in the Esky documentation or in various examples on the web.

The full error from /var/log/system.log is:

2014-06-03 13:03:07.100 HelloApp[14968]: HelloApp Error

I'm assuming that I'm not using Esky's includes option properly in setup.py, but I've got no clue as to how to fix this -- can anyone help?

Other possibly relevant details: MacOS X 10.9 Mavericks, Python 2.7.6 (local build), qt-5.3.0 opensource, sip 4.16, PyQT 5.3.0 (GPL), py2app 0.8.1 patched to support PyQT5, and the latest version of Esky from GitHub.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

I've solved this problem -- the problem was due to my limited knowledge of Python distutils and setuptools. Since things "just worked" with py2app (which was using setuptools), I assumed that the problem was with how Etsy was configured when the problem was really with how I was using distutils.

The problem was that helloworld.py was not being copied into the frozen app.

The solution involved restructuring the files and changing the disutils configuration to explicitly add HelloApp as a package.

New file structure:

HelloApp/
    hello.py   # formerly HelloApp.py
    HelloApp/
        __init__.py
        helloform.py
    setup.py

New setup.cfg:

from esky import bdist_esky
from distutils.core import setup

PY2APP_OPTIONS = {
    'argv_emulation': True,
    'includes': [ 'sip', 'PyQt5' ],
    'qt_plugins': [ '*' ]
    }
ESKY_OPTIONS = {
    "freezer_module": "py2app",
    "freezer_options": PY2APP_OPTIONS,
    "includes": [ 'sip', 'PyQt5' ]
    }

HelloApp = bdist_esky.Executable( "hello.py", gui_only=True )

setup(
    name='hello',
    version = "2014060301",
    data_files=[],
    options = { "bdist_esky": ESKY_OPTIONS },
    scripts=[ HelloApp ],
    packages=[ 'HelloApp' ],
)