Building with PyInstaller

[steveWinter]

This isn't so much an issue as an FYI which could be added to the documentation to help future users.

I have need to build a Windows executable which makes use of python-fmrest (thanks :-. I'm using PyInstaller to do this for me. All goes well with the build but when attempting to run the resulting executable the error pkg_resources.DistributionNotFound: The 'python-fmrest' distribution was not found and is required by the application is received.

For reasons which aren't entirely clear to me PyInstaller isn't able to locate the python-rest metadata and so although it knows the module is required it doesn't correctly bundle it into the built application.

To resolve this create a new folder in your project folder (e.g. hooks). In there create a file hook-fmrest.py containing

from PyInstaller.utils.hooks import copy_metadata
datas = copy_metadata('python-fmrest')

Update your .spec file to include hookspath=['.\\hooks'], in the Analysis section at the top of the file (hookspath will most likely be there, but empty).

If you don't have a .spec file already then when first calling pyinstaller add --additional-hooks-dir=C:\\Path\\To\\Your\\hooks to the command called.

Hopefully this saves future users a couple of hours of head scratching!

[davidhamann]

Thanks for reporting. I actually have a PyInstaller app where I did exactly what you described. Could have put a hint into the documentation – sorry for that.

Will leave this ticket open until I get to writing a section in the README.

[davidhamann]

Added a section to the README as per 1a9c4e846c623999647e6a9531fcb78310dc4029. Thank again for mentioning.