Subzero allows you to rapidly deploy your frozen Python application with minimal effort and additional code. Subzero does this by providing a simple and intuitive wrapper for PyInstaller coupled with an MSI builder. With a few lines of code and a single command, you can go directly from Python code to a compiled MSI installer.

pip install subzero

In your setup file, replace the default setup import with the followng:

from subzero import setup, Executable

Then run the following command:

python setup.py bdist_msi

That's it! PyInstaller will build all of the entry points and scripts specified in your executable.

In your setup function, you can specify PyInstaller options as follows:

  setup(...
        options={
'         build_exe': {
              'hiddenimports': [],
              'pathex': [],
              'datas': [],
          },
          'bdist_msi': {
              'upgrade_code': '{66620F3A-DC3A-11E2-B341-002219E9B01E}',
              'shortcuts': [
                  'ProgramMenuFolder\Hello World = my_project'
              ],
          }
  ...)

In addition, options can be specified on a per-executable basis replacing each script or entry point with an instance of the Executable class and initializing it with the required options, as shown below:

setup(...
      entry_points={
          'console_scripts': [
              'my_project = hello_world.__main__:main',
              Executable('gui = hello_world.__main__:gui', icon_file='Sample.ico', windowed=False),
          ]
      },
...)

The full array of options for build_exe is available in the PyInstaller documentation. Providing an upgrade code is strongly recommended for the bdist_msi command. A license agreement will be added to the installer if there is a license text file in the same directory as setup.py.

Note that Subzero currently cannot create shortcuts that are not placed in a root system directory. In other words, you can currently have a shortcut on the desktop of in the program menu but not in a folder on the desktop or in a folder on the program menu. This may be resolved in the future if there is greater interest.

Cython modules can also be built because Subzero executes the builtin build command before calling PyInstaller. The following is an example setup.py file for a Cython project:

from setuptools import find_packages, Extension
from subzero import setup

setup(
    name='hello_world',
    author='test_author',
    version='0.1.0',
    packages=find_packages(),
    entry_points={
      'console_scripts': [
          'my_project = hello_world.__main__:main',
      ]
    },
    options={},
    install_requires=[],
    setup_requires=[
        'setuptools>=18.0',
        'cython',
    ],
    ext_modules=[
        Extension(
            'my_module',
            sources=['my_module.pyx'],
        )
    ])