To help you get started, we've collected the most common ways that py2app is being used within popular public projects.

py2app is a Python setuptools command which will allow you to make standalone Mac OS X application bundles and plugins from Python scripts.

py2app is similar in purpose and design to py2exe for Windows.

NOTE: py2app must be used on macOS to build applications, it cannot create Mac applications on other platforms.

Project links

• Documentation
• Issue Tracker
• Repository

Release history

py2app 0.28.8

• #525: Fix breakage with setuptools 70.
• Add support for python 3.13

py2app 0.28.7

• Introduce support for Python 3.12

py2app 0.28.6

• Fix support for Python 2.7

  These are best-effort changes, I no longer have a setup where I can perform a good test run for Python 2.7.

py2app 0.28.5

• #476: Update black recipe

  The black recipe no longer worked with recent versions of black due to relying on a metadata file from the "egg" spec that's not included by black's current build tool.

  The recipe now scans the python code that's next to the mypyc compiled extension modules for dependencies and uses that to update the dependency graph. This should ensure that new dependencies of black will be automaticly detected in the future.

• Update wheel dependencies

py2app 0.28.4

• Fix incompatibility with Python 3.11

py2app 0.28.3

• #453: Fix crash in py2applet when specifying a directory to include in the application bundle.

py2app 0.28.2

• Fix incompatibility with recent setuptools

py2app 0.28.1

• #448: Fix typo in qt6 recipe

• #444: Fix issue where the standard output and standard error streams are set to non-blocking when using py2app.

  For some reason the "ibtool" command (part of Xcode) sets these streams to non-blocking when compiling NIB files. I've added a context manager that resets the non-blocking status of these streams.

• PR #446: Fix Qt5 recipe for newer versions of PyQt5

  PR by kangi.

• #447: Fix error when using py2applet --help

  Bug was introduced in the fix for #414

py2app 0.28

• PR #410: Fix typo in NamedTemporyFile call

  PR by MAKOMO

• #414 Workaround for autodiscovery in setuptools 61.0

  Setuptools 61.0 introduces autodiscovery of distribution attributes, and that broke py2app. This version introduces a setuptools.finalize_distribution_options entrypoint in py2app that will set the distributions's name and py_modules attributes in a way that is compatible with the main code of py2app when they are not yet set (before autodiscovery kicks in).

  In older versions of py2app buildin an app can fail in two ways with setuptools 61.0 or later:

  • The name of the generated application is not based on the script name, but some other value.
  • Calling python setup.py py2app results in an error mentioning Multiple top-level modules discovered.

• PR #418: Add recipe for black

  PR by mrclary

• #417: Also include package dist-info for editable installs

• The qt5 and qt6 recipes used dodge logic to detect if the Qt library itself is inside the python package, resulting in duplicate copies of Qt.

• #406: Fix incompatibility with python 2.7

  py2app 0.24 accidently broke compatibility with Python 2.7, and this release fixes this.

  This is the last release with Python 2.7 support, the next release will contain package metadata that ensures it can only be installed on Python 3.

• #413: Find dist-info in included pythonXX.zip

  By default the working_set of pkg_resources does not contain distribution information from packages included in zip files, such as the zipped-up stdlib + site-pakckages in py2app bundles.

  Add some monkey patching to apps using pkg_resources to fix this.

• Fix hard crash in "rtree" recipe when the package contents doesn't match the recipe expectations.

• #408: Add definition of site.PREFIXES

• #412: Fix incompatibility with setuptools 60.8.1

  The setuptools recipe did not recoginize all vendored dependencies in pkg_resources and that breaks app bundles that use pkg_resoures.

• PR #388: Add builtin definitions for 'quit' and 'exit' in site.py

  PR by mcclary

• PR #388: Set "ENABLE_USER_SITE=False" in site.py

  PR by mcclary

• PR #396: Update pygame recipe to remove missing icon

  PR by glyph

py2app 0.27

• #377: The qt5 and qt6 recipes caused a py2app crash when the PyQt5 or PyQt6 is not installed.
• #401: Fix incompatibility with setuptools 60.7 and later
• #391: Drop usage of tempfile.mktemp
• #387: Add site.ENABLE_USER_SITE in the site.py file for applications (value is always False).

py2app 0.26.1

• #374: Actually ship the "old" stub executables introduced in version 0.26

py2app 0.26

• Stub executables were recompiled on macOS 11

  This means support for light mode/dark mode should now work out of the box.

  The old stub executables are still used when detecting that Tkinter is used with an old build of Tk.

• #1: Include ".egg-info" and ".dist-info" information in the bundled application

  This fixes any python package that uses pkg_resources to look for specific distributions.

• py2app.filters.not_stdlib_filter now knows about Python's "venv"

• #368: Add recipe "detect_dunder_file"

  This recipe will ensure that a Python package is stored outside of site-packages.zip when a module in that package uses the __file__ variable.

  This variable is most commonly used to load resources stored in the package (instead of the newer importlib.resources and pkg_resources libraries).

• #339: Add recipe for pydantic

  The recipe is needed because pydantic uses Cython to compile all sources (including the package __init__) and therefore hides imports from the dependency analyzer.

• #338: Add "imageio_ffmpeg" to autopackages

• PR367: Add recipes for pandas, pylsp, and zmq

• PR367: Add docutils and pylint to autopackages

  PR by Ryan Clary (mrclary on GitHub)

• #344: Invocation of codesign on the whole bundle sometimes fails

  Py2app will now try this a number of times before giving up. This is at best a workaround for and doesn't completely fix the problem.

• #370: py2app now works with Python 3.10

  Python 3.10 no longer exports a (private) symbol used by the py2app stub executable. Switched to a public API to accomplish the same task where available.

• #110: Add recipe for SQLAlchemy

  The recipe includes all dialects and connectors, including implicit dependencies, because SQLAlchemy uses __import__ to load dependencies.

• #328: Add recipe for gcloud

• #195: Add USER_BASE, getuserbase() and getusersitepackages() to py2app's version of site.py.

• #184: Add recipe for 'ssl'

  This recipe is only used for Python 3.4 or later and ensures that the CA bundle used by Python's ssl module is included in the app bundle and OpenSSL is configured to look for that bundle in the application bundle.

• #371: change default error message on launch problems

  The default error message shown when the application cannot be launched is now slightly more useful and refers the py2app debug page.

• #345, #169: Adjust qt5 and qt6 recipes for non-PyPI installations

  The qt5 and qt6 recipes now should work when the Qt installation prefix is outside of the PyQt package, for example when PyQt was installed through homebrew.

  I've tested this for PyQt5 and made the same change to the PyQt6 recipe, although I haven't tested that change.

py2app 0.25

• #358: Add recipe for multiprocessing

• PR363: Add recipe for platformdirs

  PR by Ryan Clary (mrclary on GitHub)

• PR353: Add recipe for sphinx

  PR by Ryan Clary (mrclary on GitHub)

• PR352: Fix for using ipython

  PR by Ryan Clary (mrclary on GitHub)

• PR351: Tweak the matplotlib recipe

  PR by Ryan Clary (mrclary on GitHub)

• PR348: Fix for checking for dead symlinks links in py2app

  PR by Oliver Cordes (ocordes on GitHub)

• #354: Fix buggy "autopackages" and "automissing" recipes

• #350: Add sentencepiece to the autopackages list

• #359: Add recipe for PyQt6

• #349: Add recipe for OpenCV (opencv-python, import cv2)

• PR365: Add RTree recipe

  PR by Ryan Clary (mrclary on GitHub)

py2app 0.24

• Consolidate recipes that just include a package as is into a single recipe to reduce code complexity.

• Consolidate recipes that just mark imports as expected missing into a single recipe to reduce code complexity.

• #334: Include binary stubs for Universal 2 and arm64 binaries in the archives

  The files were in the repository, but were excluded from the source and wheel archives.

py2app 0.23

• #315: Stub executables have an LC_RPATH that points to the Frameworks folder

  PR by Aleksandar Topuzović (atopuzov)

• #322: Port wxPython examples to 4.0

  PR by Hamish Mcintyre-Bhatty (hamishmb)

• #314: Don't use Image.DEBUG in the PIL recipy, that attribute is not longer valid

  PR by Aleksandar Topuzović

• #320: Process "@loader_path" in load commands

  A popular pattern in C extensions with bindins to C library on PyPI is to copy those C libraries into the wheel and reference those using an "@loader_path" linker command in the C extension. Until this release py2app could not process those linker commands correctly.

• #298: Add recipe for pycryptodome

• #282: Add recipe for h5py

• #283: Add recipe for tensorflow

  The recipe just includes the entire package into the generated app bundle, I haven't checked yet if there is a way to reduce the size of this package (which is rather huge).

py2app 0.22

• #319: Add ad-hoc signature for application bundles

  ARM64 binaries on macOS 11 must be signed, even if it is only an ad-hoc signature. py2app will now add an ad-hoc code signature.

• #300: Add support for ARM64 and Universal 2 binaries

  Note

  Support is highly experimental, these stubs have not been tested yet.

• #299: Fix build error when building with the copy of Python 3 shipped with Xcode.

• #281: Generated bundle doesn't work on macOS 10.9 and 10.10.

py2app 0.21

• PR 277 (Christian Clauss): Fix some Python 3 issues
• #276: Rebuilt the binary stubs on a 10.12 machine to fix launching

py2app 0.20

• Migrate to GitHub
• #274: Fix an issue in the PyQt5 recipe
• Fix issue with emulate-shell-environment option on macOS 10.15 (Catalina)
• #269: Py2app didn't work with Python 3.8

py2app 0.19

• #251: Add recipe for "botocore"

• #253: "python setup.py py2app -A" creates invalid bundle from "venv" virtual environments

• Updated recipe for PySide2 and new recipe for Shiboken2

  Patch by Alberto Sottile.

py2app 0.18

• #250: Add recipe for "six.moves", which also works when the six library is vendored by other packages

py2app 0.17

• #247: The new tkinter recipe didn't work properly for installations that do use a framework install of Tcl/Tk.

py2app 0.16

• #244: Copy the Tcl/Tk support libraries into the application bundle for Python builds using a classic unix install of Tcl/Tk instead of a framework build.

  This results in working app bundles when a Python.org installation that includes Tcl/Tk (such as Python 3.7).

• Don't copy numpy into application just because the application uses Pillow.

• Add recipe for Pyside

  Patch by Alberto Sottile

py2app 0.15

• Fixed issues for Python 3.7, in particular changes in the plistlib library (Issue #242, #239)
• Updated dependencies on macholib, altgraph and modulegraph

Due to a bug in CPython 3.7.0 using -O does not work with that version of CPython

py2app 0.14.1

• Updated dependencies
• Updated PyPI metadata

py2app 0.14

Features:

• Started using flake8 to improve coding style

Bug fixes:

• Issue #222: The fix for issue #179 broke the argv emulator
• Issue #226: Py2app could fail while reporting on possibly missing modules
• Issue #228: The python executable included in the app bundle as sys.exectuable was not executable

py2app 0.13

Bug fixes:

• Issue 185 in PyObjC's tracker: sysconfig using __import__ in Python 3.6 or later, which confuses modulegraph.

• Pull request #17: Location of site-packages in the "--user" location has changed

  Patch by Matt Mukerjee

Features:

• (None yet)

py2app 0.12

• Pull request #15 by Armin Samii: Safer symlink and file copying
• Update recipes: a number of recipe names conflicted with toplevel modules imported by recipes. This causes problems on Python 2.7 (without absolute imports)

py2app 0.11

• Make sure the stdout/stderr streams of the main binary of the application are unbuffered.

  See issue #177 in PyObjC's repository for more information.

• Fix issue #201: py2app is not compatible with pyvenv virtualenvs

  With additional fix by Oskari Timperi.

• Fix issue #179: the stdout/stderr streams are no longer forwarded to console.app using ASL (by default), use "--redirect-stdout-to-asl" to enable the redirection functionality.

  Note that for unclear reasons the redirection doesn't work on OSX 10.12 at the moment.

• Fix issue #188: Troubles with lxml.isoschematron

  The package 'lxml.isoschematron' is not zip-safe and tries to load resources using the normal filesystem APIs, which doesn't work when the package is part of a zipfile.

• py2applet now longer uses "argv_emulation" by default, that results in too many problems.

• Issue #174: clean up the summary about missing modules by removing warnings about things that aren't modules.

  Also notes when an module is likely an alias for some other module. These changes should remove a lot of false postive warnings from the output of py2app.

• Fix issue #161: opengl recipe uses "file" function that isn't present on Python 3

• Add "qt5" recipe that does the right thing for the PyQt5 wheel on PyPI (tested with PyQt5 5.6)

• Add support for "@loader_path" in the link commands of C extension.

  This makes it possible to use wheels that were processed by delocate-listdeps when building application bundles.

• Do not report imports that are expected to be missing

  Patch by Barry Scott.

py2app 0.10

• The recipe for virtualenv calls a modulegraph method that was made private in a recent release and hence no longer worked with py2app 0.9.

  Update the recipe to work around this.

py2app 0.9

• issue #146, #147: The "python" binary in MyApp.app/Contents/MacOS was the small stub exetable from framework builds, instead of the actual command-line interpreter. The result is that you couldn't use sys.executable to start a new interpreter, which (amongst others) breaks multiprocessing.

• pull request #7: Add support for PyQt5 to the sip recipe. Patch by Mark Montague.

• pull request #4: Copying PySide plugins was broken due to bad indentation.

• pull request #5: py2app was broken for python versions that don't use _sysconfigdata.

• issue #135: Don't sleep for a second after compiling a XIB file

• issue #134: Remove target location before copying files into the bundle.

• issue #133: Ensure that the application's "Framework" folder is on the search path for ctypes.util.find_library.

• issue #132: Depend on modulegraph 0.12 to avoid build errors when the python code contains references to compatibility modules that contain SyntaxErrors for the current python version.

• Explicitly report modules that cannot be found at the end of the run (for non-alias builds)

  Note: This is just a warning, missing modules are not necessarily a problem because modulegraph can detect imports for modules that aren't used on OSX (for example)

• Report modules that contain syntax errors at the end of the run (for non-alias builds)

  Note: This is just a warning, syntax errors be valid when the dependency tree contains modules for the other major release of python (e.g a compat_py2 module that contains compatibility code for Python 2 and contains code that isn't valid Python 3)

py2app 0.8.1

• Loading scripts didn't work when --no-chdir was used

  Reported by Barry Scott in private mail.

py2app 0.8

py2app 0.8 is a feature release

• Fixed argv emulator on OSX 10.9, the way the code detected that the application was launched through the Finder didn't work on that OSX release.

• The launcher binary is now linked with Cocoa, that should avoid some problems with sandboxed applications (in particular: standard open panels don't seem to work properly in a sandboxed application when the main binary is not linked to AppKit)

• Don't copy Python's Makefile, Setup file and the like into a bundle when sysconfig and distutils.sysconfig don't need these files (basicly, when using any recent python version).

• Fix some issues with virtualenv support:

  • detection of system installs of Python didn't work properly when using a virtualenv. Because of this py2app did not create a "semi-standalone" bundle when using a virtualenv created with /usr/bin/python.
  • "semi-standalone" bundles created from a virtualenv included more files when they should (in particular bits of the stdlib)

• Issue #92: Add option '--force-system-tk' which ensures that the _tkinter extension (used by Tkinter) is linked against the Apple build of Tcl/Tk, even when it is linked to another framework in Python's std. library.

  This will cause a build error when tkinter is linked with a major version of Tcl/Tk that is not present in /System/Library/Frameworks.

• Issue #80: Add support for copying system plugins into the application bundle.

  Py2app now supports a new option include_plugins. The value of this is a list of paths to plugins that should be copied into the application bundle.

  Items in the list are either paths, or a tuple with the plugin type and the path:

  include_plugins=[
    "MyPlugins/MyDocument.qlgenerator",
    ("SystemConfiguration", "MyPlugins/MyConfig.plugin"),
  ]
  

  Py2app currently knows about the following plugin suffixes: .qlgenerator, .mdimporter, .xpc, .service, .prefPane, .iaplugin and .action. These plugins can be added without specifying the plugin type.

• Issue #83: Setup.py now refuses to install when the current platform is not Mac OS X.

  This makes it clear that the package is only supported on OSX and avoids confusing errors later on.

• Issue #39: It is now possible to have subpackages on in the "packages" option of py2app.

• Issue #37: Add recipe for pyEnchant

  ..note:

  The recipe only works for installations of pyEnchant
  where pyEnchant is stored in the installation (such
  as the binary eggs on PyPI), not for installations
  that either use the "PYENCHANT_LIBRARY_PATH" environment
  variable or MacPorts.
  

• Issue #90: Removed the 'email' recipe, but require a new enough version of modulegraph instead. Because of this py2app now requires modulegraph 0.11 or later.

py2app 0.7.4

• Issue #77: the stdout/stderr streams of application and plugin bundles did not end up in Console.app on OSX 10.8 (as they do on earlier releases of OSX). This is due to a change in OSX.

  With this version the application executable converts writes to the stdout and stderr streams to the ASL logging subsystem with the options needed to end up in the default view of Console.app.

  NOTE: The stdout and stderr streams of plugin bundles are not redirected, as it is rather bad form to change the global environment of the host application.

• The i386, x86_64 and intel stub binaries are now compiled with clang on OSX 10.8, instead of an older version of GCC. The other stub versions still are compiled on OSX 10.6.

• Issue #111: The site.py generated by py2app now contains a USER_SITE variable (with a default value of None) because some software tries to import the value.

• Py2app didn't preserve timestamps for files copied into application bundles, and this can cause a bytecompiled file to appear older than the corresponding source file (for packages copied in the bundle using the 'packages' option).

  Related to issue #101

• Py2app also didn't copy file permissions for files copied into application bundles, which isn't a problem in general but did cause binaries to lose there executable permissions (as noted on Stackoverflow)

• Issue #101: Set "PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE" in the environment before calling Py_Initialize to ensure that the interpreter won't try to write bytecode files (which can cause problems when using sandboxed applications).

• Issue #105: py2app can now create app and plugin bundles when the main script has an encoding other than ASCII, in particular for Python 3.

• Issue #106: Ensure that the PIL recipe works on Python 3. PIL itself isn't ported yet, but Pillow does work with Python 3.

• "python setup.py install" now fails unless the machine is running Mac OS X.

  I've seen a number of reports of users that try to use py2app on Windows or Linux to build OSX applications. That doesn't work, py2app now fails during installation do make this clear.

• Disabled the 'email' recipe for python 3.x as it isn't needed there.

• Issue #91: Added a recipe for lxml <http://lxml.de/&gt;, needed because lxml performs a number of imports from an extension and those cannot be detected automaticly by modulegraph.

• Issue #94: The site-packages zipfile in the application bundle now contains zipfile entries for directories as well. This is needed to work around a bug in the zipimporter for Python 3.3: it won't consider 'pkg/foo.py' to be in namespace package 'pkg' unless there is a zipfile entry for the 'pkg' folder (or there is a 'pkg/__init__.py' entry).

• Issue #97: Fixes a problem with the pyside and sip recipes when the 'qt_plugins' option is used for 'image_plugins'.

• Issue #96: py2app should work with python 2.6 again (previous releases didn't work due to using the sysconfig module introduced in python 2.7)

• Issue #99: appstore requires a number of symlinks in embedded frameworks.

  (Version 0.7 already added a link Python.frameworks/Versions/Current, this versions also adds Python.framework/Python and Python.framework/Resources with the value required by the appstore upload tool).

• Py2app copied stdlib packages into the app bundle for semi-standalone builds when they are mentioned in the '--packages' option (either explicitly or by a recipe). This was unintentional, semi-standlone builds should rely on the external Python framework for the stdlib.

  Note

  Because of this bug parts of the stdlib of /usr/bin/python could be copied into app bundles created with py2app.

py2app 0.7.3

py2app 0.7.3 is a bugfix release

• Issue #82: Remove debug print statement from py2app.util.LOADER that caused problems with Python 3.

• Issue #81: Py2app now fails with an error when trying to build a bundle for a unix-style shared library build of Python (--enable-shared) unless you are using a recent enough patchlevel of python (2.7.4, 3.2.3, 3.3.1, 3.4.0, all of them are not released yet).

  The build failure was added to avoid a very confusing error when trying to start the generated application due to a bug in the way python reads the environment (for shared library builds on Mac OS X).

• Py2app will also give an error message when the python binary does not have a shared library (or framework) at all.

• Issue #87: Ignore '.git' and '.hg' directories while copying package data ('.svn' and 'CVS' were already ignored).

• Issue #65: the fix in 0.7 to avoid copying a symlinked library twice caused problems for some users because only one of the file names ended up in the application bundle. This release ensures that both names exist (one as a symbolic name to the other).

• Issue #88: Ensure that the fix for #65 won't try to create a symlink that points to itself. This could for example occur with homebrew, where the exposed lib directory contains symlinks to a cellar, while tye install_name does mention the "public" lib directory:

  $ ls -l /opt/homebrew/lib
  ...
  libglib-2.0.0.dylib -> ../Cellar/glib/2.32.4/lib/libglib-2.0.0.dylib
  ...
  
  $ otool -vL /opt/homebrew/lib/libglib-2.0.0.dylib
  /opt/homebrew/lib/libglib-2.0.0.dylib:
     /opt/homebrew/lib/libglib-2.0.0.dylib (compatibility version 3201.0.0, current version 3201.4.0)
     time stamp 1 Thu Jan  1 01:00:01 1970
  ...
  

py2app 0.7.2

py2app 0.7.2 is a bugfix release

• Issue #75: Don't remove --dist-dir, but only remove the old version of the objects we're trying to build (if that exists).

  This once again makes it possible to have a number of setup.py files that build plugins into the same target folder (such as the plugins folder of an application)

• Issue #78: Packages added using the --packages option didn't end up on sys.path for semi-standalone applications.

  Reported by Steve Strassmann

• Issue #76: Semi-standalone packages using extensions modules coudn't use extensions unless they also used the --site-packages option (and the extensions are in the site-packages directory).

  Fixes some problems with PyQt and wxWidgets when using the system installation of Python.

  Patch by Dan Horner.

• It is currently not possible to use a subpackage ("foo.bar") in the list of packages for the "packages" option. Py2app now explicitly checks for this and prints an error message instead of building an application that doesn't work.

  Issue: #39

py2app 0.7.1

py2app 0.7.1 is a bugfix release

• Always include 'pkg_resources', this is needed to correctly work with setuptools namespace packages, the __init__.py files of those contain __import__('pkg_resources') and that call isn't recognized as an import by the bytecode scanner.

• Issue #67: py2applet didn't work with python 3 due to the use of 'raw_input'

  Reported by Andrew Barnert.

• Issue #68: the "extra-scripts" feature introduced in 0.7 couldn't copy scripts that aren't in the same directory as "setup.py".

  Reported by Andrew Barnert.

• For semi-standalone applications the "lib-dynload" directory inside the application was not on "sys.path", which resulted in launch failures when using an extension that is not in the stdlib.

• Issue #70: application fails to launch when script uses Windows line endings

  Reported by Luc Jean.

py2app 0.7

py2app 0.7 is a bugfix release

• Issue #65: generated bundle would crash when two libraries linked to the same library using different names (one refering to the real name, the other to a symlink).

  An example if this is an application using wxWidgets when wxWidgets is installed using homebrew.

  Reported by "Bouke".

• Issue #13: It is now possible to add helper scripts to a bundle, for example for creating a GUI that starts a helper script in the background.

  This can be done by using the option "--extra-scripts", the value of which is a list of script files (".py" or ".pyw" files).

• Smarter matplotlib recipe, it is now possible to specify which backends should be included. Issue #44, reported by Adam Kovics.

  The argument to --matplotlib-backends (or 'matplotlib_backends' in setup.py) is a list of plugins to include. Use '-' to not include backends other than those found by the import statement analysis, and '*' to include all backends (without necessarily including all of matplotlib)

  As an example, use --matplotlib-backends=wxagg to include just the wxagg backend.

  Default is to include the entire matplotlib package.

• The packages included by a py2app recipe weren't processed by modulegraph and hence their dependencies were not always included.

• Fix virtualenv support: alias builds in a virtual environment failed to work.

  (There are still issues with semi-standalone and alias plugin bundles in a virtualenv environment).

• issue #18: improved PyQt and PySide support.

  Py2app now has a new option named "--qt-plugins" (or "qt_plugins" in setup.py), this option specify a list of plugins that should be included in the application bundle. The items of the list can have a number of forms:

  • "plugintype/libplugin.dylib"

    Specify one particular plugin

  • "plugintype/*foo*"

    Specify one or more plugins using a glob pattern

  • "plugintype"

    Include all plugins of a type, equivalent to "plugintype/*".

  The plugins are copied into "Resources/qt_plugins" and py2app adds a "qt.conf" file that points to that location for plugins.

• issue #49: package data that is a zipfile is now correctly copied into the bundle instead of extracting the archive.

• issue #59: compile site.py to ensure that the generated bundle doesn't change on first run.

  This is nice to have in general, and essential when using code signing because the signature will break when a new file is added after signing.

  Reported by Michael McCracken.

• issue #60: recipe for "email" package was not loaded

  Reported by Chris Beaumont

• issue #46: py2app no longer warns about the Qt license. We don't warn about other possibly GPL licensed software either and py2app is not a license-enforcement tool.

  Reported by briank_in_la.

• Generated bundles always started with python optimization active (that is, as if running as 'python -O').

• Fix issue #53: py2app would crash if a data file happened to be a zipfile.

• py2app copies data files in the directory for a package into the application bundle. It also did this for directories that represent subpackages, which made it impossible to exclude subpackages.

• added recipe for wxPython because some subpackages of wxPython use __path__ trickery that confuses modulegraph.

• recipes can now return a list of additional entries for the 'includes' list.

• rewritten the recipe for matplotlib. The recipe no longer includes the entire package, but just the "mpl-data" directory.

  WARNING: This recipe has had limited testing.

• fix mixed indentation (tabs and spaces) in argv_emulation.py, which caused installation failures on python 3.x (issue #40)

• Issue #43: py2app now creates a symlink named "Current" in the 'Versions' directory of the embedded Python framework to comply with a requirement for the Mac App-store.

• on some OSX releases the application receives both the "open application" and "open documents" Apple Events during startup, which broke an assumption in argv_emulation.py.

• py2app is more strict w.r.t. explictly closing files, this avoids ResourceWarnings for unclosed files.

• fix test issue with semi-standalone builds on Python 3.2

• added recipe for pyzmq

• Don't use the version information from Python.framework's Info.plist, but use sys.version_info. This fixes a build problem with EPD.

• Ignore some more files when copying package data:

  • VIM swap files (.foo.py.swp)
  • Backup files for a number of tools: foo.orig and foo~

py2app 0.6.4

py2app 0.6.4 is a bugfix and minor feature release

• Issue #28: the argv emulator crashes in 64-bit mode on OSX 10.5

  Fixing this issue required yet another rewrite of the argv_emulator code.

• Added option '--arch=VALUE' which can be used to select the set of architectures for the main executable. This defaults to the set of architectures supported by the python interpreter and can be used to drop support for some architectures (for example when you're using a python binary that supports both 32-bit and 64-bit code and use a GUI library that does not yet work in 64-bit mode).

  Valid values for the argument are archectures used in the list below and the following groups of architectures:

  • fat: i386, ppc
  • fat3: i386, x86_64, ppc
  • univeral: i386, x86_64, ppc, ppc64
  • intel: i386, x86_64

• Issue #32: fix crash when application uses PySide

  This is partially fixed in macholib (release 1.4.3)

• The '-O' flag of py2app now defaults to the python optimization level when using python 2.6 or later.

• Issue #31: honor optimze flag at runtime.

  Until now an application bundle created by py2app would also run without the "-O" flag, even when the user specified it should. This is now fixed.

• Issue #33: py2app's application bundle launcher now clears the environment variable PYOBJC_BUNDLE_ADDRESS, avoids a crash when using PyObjC in an application launched from a py2app based plugin bundle.

• py2app's bundle launcher set the environment variable PYOBJC_BUNDLE_ADDRESS, this variable is now deprecated. Use PYOBJC_BUNDLE_ADDRESS instead (replace `` by the process ID of the current process).

• When using the system python we now explicitly add Apple's additional packages (like PyObjC and Twisted) to sys.path.

  This fixes and issue reported by Sean Robinson: py2app used to create a non-working bundle when you used these packages because the packages didn't get included (as intented), but were not available on sys.path either.

• Fixed the recipe for sip, which in turn ensures that PyQt4 applications work.

  As before the SIP recipe is rather crude, it will include all SIP-based packages into your application bundle when it detects a module that uses SIP.

• The 'Resources' folder is no longer on the python search path, it contains the scripts while Python modules and packages are located in the site-packages directory. This change is related to issue #30.

• The folder 'Resources/Python/site-packages' is no longer on the python search path. This folder is not used by py2app itself, but might by used by custom build scripts that wrap around py2app.

• Issue #30: py2app bundles failed to launch properly when the scriptfile has the same name as a python package used by the application.

• Issue #15: py2app now has an option to emulate the shell environment you get by opening a window in the Terminal.

  Usage: python setup.py py2app --emulate-shell-environment

  This option is experimental, it is far from certain that the implementation works on all systems.

• Issue #16: --argv-emulation now works with Python 3.x and in 64-bit executables.

• Issue #17: py2applet script defaults 'argv_emulation' to False when your using a 64-bit build of python, because that option is not supported on such builds.

• py2app now clears the temporary directory in 'build' and the output directory in 'dist' before doing anything. This avoids unwanted interactions between results from a previous builds and the current build.

• Issue #22: py2app will give an error when the specified version is invalid, instead of causing a crash in the generated executable.

• Issue #23: py2app failed to work when an .egg directory was implictly added to sys.path by setuptools and the "-O" option was used (for example python setup.py py2app -O2)

• Issue #26: py2app copied the wrong executable into the application bundle when using virtualenv with a framework build of Python.

py2app 0.6.3

py2app 0.6.3 is a bugfix release

• py2app failed to compile .xib files (as reported on the pythonmac-sig mail-ing list).

py2app 0.6.2

py2app 0.6.2 is a bugfix release

• py2app failed to copy the iconfile into application bundle (reported by Russel Owen)

• py2app failed to copy resources and data files as well (the resource key in the py2ap options dictionary and the data_files argument to the setup function).

  Issue #19, reported by bryon(at)spideroak.com.

• py2app failed to build application bundles when using virtualenv due to assumptions about the relation between sys.prefix and sys.executable.

  Report and fix by Erik van Zijst.

• Ensure that the 'examples' directory is included in the source archive

py2app 0.6.1

py2app 0.6.1 is a bugfix release

Bugfixes:

• py2app failed to build the bundle when python package contained a zipfile with data.

  This version solves most of that problem using a rough workaround (the issue is fixed when the filename ends with '.zip').

• The code that recreates the stub executables when they are older than the source code now uses xcode-select to find the root of SDKs.

  This makes it possible to recreate these executables on machines where both Xcode 3 and Xcode 4 are installed and Xcode 3 is the default Xcode.

• The stub executables were regenerated using Xcode 3

  As a word of warning: Xcode 4 cannot be used to rebuild the stub executables, in particular not those that have support for the PPC architecture.

• Don't rebuild the stub executables automaticly, that's unsafe with Xcode 4 and could trigger accidently when files are installed in a different order than expected.

• Small tweaks to the testsuite to ensure that they work on systems with both Xcode3 and Xcode4 (Xcode3 must be the selected version).

• Better cleanup in the testsuite when setupClass fails.

py2app 0.6

py2app 0.6 is a minor feature release

Features:

• it is now possible to specify which python distributions must be availble when building the bundle by using the "install_requires" argument of the setup() function:

  setup(
  
      ...
  install_requires = [
     "pyobjc == 2.2"
  ],
  )
  

• py2app can now package namespace packages that were installed using pip <http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pip&gt; or the setuptools install option --single-version-externally-managed.

• the bundle template now supports python3, based on a patch by Virgil Dupras.

• alias builds no longer use Carbon Aliases and therefore are supported with python3 as well (patch by Virgil Dupras)

• argv emulation doesn't work in python 3, this release will tell you abou this instead of silently failing to build a working bundle.

• add support for custom URLs to the argv emulation code (patch by Brendan Simon).

  You will have to add a "CFBundleURLTypes" key to your Info.plist to use this, the argv emulation code will ensure that the URL to open will end up in sys.argv.

• py2app.util contains a number of functions that are now deprecated an will be removed in a future version, specifically: os_path_islink, os_path_isdir, path_to_zip, get_zip_data, get_mtime, and os_readlink.

• The module py2app.simpleio no longer exists, and should never have been in the repository (it was part of a failed rewrite of the I/O layer).

Bug fixes:

• fix problem with symlinks in copied framework, as reported by Dan Ross.
• py2applet didn't work in python 3.x.
• The --alias option didn't work when building a plugin bundle (issue #10, fix by Virgil Dupras)
• Avoid copying the __pycache__ directory in python versions that implement PEP 3147 (Python 3.2 and later)
• App bundles with Python 3 now work when the application is stored in a directory with non-ASCII characters in the full name.
• Do not compile .nib files, it is not strictly needed and breaks PyObjC projects that still use the NibClassBuilder code.
• Better error messsages when trying to include a non-existing file as a resource.
• Don't drop into PDB when an exception occurs.
• Issue #5: Avoid a possible stack overflow in the bundle executable
• Issue #9: Work with python 3.2
• Fix build issues with python 2.5 (due to usage of too modern distutils command subclasses)
• The source distribution didn't include all files that needed to be it ever since switching to mercurial, I've added a MANIFEST.in file rather than relying on setuptool's autoguessing of files to include.
• Bundle template works again with semi-standalone builds (such as when using a system python), this rewrites the fix for issue #10 mentioned earlier.
• Ensure py2app works correctly when the sources are located in a directory with non-ascii characters in its name.

py2app 0.5.2

py2app 0.5.2 is a bugfix release

Bug fixes:

• Ensure that the right stub executable gets found when using the system python 2.5

py2app 0.5.1

py2app 0.5.1 is a bugfix release

Bug fixes:

• Ensure stub executables get included in the egg files
• Fix name of the bundletemplate stub executable for 32-bit builds

py2app 0.5

py2app 0.5 is a minor feature release.

Features:

• Add support for the --with-framework-name option of Python's configure script, that is: py2app now also works when the Python framework is not named 'Python.framework'.
• Add support for various build flavours of Python (32bit, 3-way, ...)
• py2app now actually works for me () with a python interpreter in a virtualenv environment.
• Experimental support for python 3

Bug fixes:

• Fix recipe for matplotlib: that recipe caused an exception with current versions of matplotlib and pytz.
• Use modern API's in the alias-build bootstrap code, without this 'py2app -A' will result in broken bundles on a 64-bit build of Python. (Patch contributed by James R Eagan)
• Try both 'import Image' and 'from PIL import Image' in the PIL recipe. (Patch contributed by Christopher Barker)
• The stub executable now works for 64-bit application bundles
• (Lowlevel) The application stub was rewritten to use dlopen instead of dyld APIs. This removes deprecation warnings during compilation.

py2app 0.4.3

py2app 0.4.3 is a bugfix release

Bug fixes:

• A bad format string in build_app.py made it impossible to copy the Python framework into an app bundle.

py2app 0.4.2

py2app 0.4.2 is a minor feature release

Features:

• When the '--strip' option is specified we now also remove '.dSYM' directories from the bundle.

• Remove dependency on a 'version.plist' file in the python framework

• A new recipe for PyQt 4.x. This recipe was donated by Kevin Walzer.

• A new recipe for virtualenv, this allows you to use py2app from a virtual environment.

• Adds support for converting .xib files (NIB files for Interface Builder 3)

• Introduces an experimental plugin API for data converters.

  A conversion plugin should be defined as an entry-point in the py2app.converter group:

  setup(
    ...
  entry_points = {
    'py2app.converter': [
        "label          = some_module:converter_function",
     ]
  },
  ...
  )
  

  The conversion function should be defined like this:

  from py2app.decorators import converts
  
  @converts('.png')
  def optimze_png(source, proposed_destionation, dryrun=0):
     # Copy 'source' to 'proposed_destination'
  # The conversion is allowed to change the proposed
  # destination to another name in the same directory.
     pass
  

Buf fixes:

• This fixes an issue with copying a different version of Python over to an app/plugin bundle than the one used to run py2app with.

py2app 0.4.0

py2app 0.4.0 is a minor feature release (and was never formally released).

Features:

• Support for CoreData mapping models (introduced in Mac OS X 10.5)
• Support for python packages that are stored in zipfiles (such as zip_safe python eggs).

Bug fixes:

• Fix incorrect symlink target creation with an alias bundle that has included frameworks.
• Stuffit tends to extract archives recursively, which results in unzipped code archives inside py2app-created bundles. This version has a workaround for this "feature" for Stuffit.
• Be more carefull about passing non-constant strings as the template argumenti of string formatting functions (in the app and bundle templates), to avoid crashes under some conditions.

py2app 0.3.6

py2app 0.3.6 is a minor bugfix release.

Bug fixes:

• Ensure that custom icons are copied into the output bundle
• Solve compatibility problem with some haxies and inputmanager plugins

py2app 0.3.5

py2app 0.3.5 is a minor bugfix release.

Bug fixes:

• Resolve disable_linecache issue
• Fix Info.plist and Python path for plugins

py2app 0.3.4

py2app 0.3.4 is a minor bugfix release.

Bug fixes:

• Fixed a typo in the py2applet script
• Removed some, but not all, compiler warnings from the bundle template (which is still probably broken anyway)

py2app 0.3.3

py2app 0.3.3 is a minor bugfix release.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a typo in the argv emulation code
• Removed the unnecessary py2app.install hack (setuptools does that already)

py2app 0.3.2

py2app 0.3.2 is a major bugfix release.

Functional changes:

• Massively updated documentation
• New prefer-ppc option
• New recipes: numpy, scipy, matplotlib
• Updated py2applet script to take options, provide --make-setup

Bug Fixes:

• No longer defaults to LSPrefersPPC
• Replaced stdlib usage of argvemulator to inline version for i386 compatibility

py2app 0.3.1

py2app 0.3.1 is a minor bugfix release.

Functional changes:

• New EggInstaller example

Bug Fixes:

• Now ensures that the executable is +x (when installed from egg this may not be the case)

py2app 0.3.0

py2app 0.3.0 is a major feature enhancements release.

Functional changes:

• New --xref (-x) option similar to py2exe's that produces a list of modules and their interdependencies as a HTML file
• sys.executable now points to a regular Python interpreter alongside the regular executable, so spawning sub-interpreters should work much more reliably
• Application bootstrap now detects paths containing ":" and will provide a "friendly" error message instead of just crashing <>.
• Application bootstrap now sets PYTHONHOME instead of a large PYTHONPATH
• Application bootstrap rewritten in C that links to CoreFoundation and Cocoa dynamically as needed, so it doesn't imply any particular version of the runtime.
• Documentation and examples changed to use setuptools instead of distutils.core, which removes the need for the py2app import
• Refactored to use setuptools, distributed as an egg.
• macholib, bdist_mpkg, modulegraph, and altgraph are now separately maintained packages available on PyPI as eggs
• macholib now supports little endian architectures, 64-bit Mach-O headers, and reading/writing of multiple headers per file (fat / universal binaries)

py2app 0.2.1

py2app 0.2.1 is a minor bug fix release.

Bug Fixes:

• macholib.util.in_system_path understands SDKs now
• DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH searching is fixed
• Frameworks and excludes options should work again.

py2app 0.2.0

py2app 0.2.0 is a minor bug fix release.

Functional changes:

• New datamodels option to support CoreData. Compiles .xcdatamodel files and places them in the Resources dir (as .mom).
• New use-pythonpath option. The py2app application bootstrap will no longer use entries from PYTHONPATH unless this option is used.
• py2app now persists information about the build environment (python version, executable, build style, etc.) in the Info.plist and will clean the executable before rebuilding if anything at all has changed.
• bdist_mpkg now builds packages with the full platform info, so that installing a package for one platform combination will not look like an upgrade to another platform combination.

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed a bug in standalone building, where a rebuild could cause an unlaunchable executable.
• Plugin bootstrap should compile/link correctly with gcc 4.
• Plugin bootstrap no longer sets PYTHONHOME and will restore PYTHONPATH after initialization.
• Plugin bootstrap swaps out thread state upon plug-in load if it is the first to initialize Python. This fixes threading issues.

py2app 0.1.9

py2app 0.1.9 is a minor bug fix release.

Bugs fixed:

• bdist_mpkg now builds zip files that are correctly unzipped by all known tools.
• The behavior of the bootstrap has changed slightly such that __file__ should now point to your main script, rather than the bootstrap. The main script has also moved to Resources, from Resources/Python, so that __file__ relative resource paths should still work.

py2app 0.1.8

py2app 0.1.8 is a major enhancements release:

Bugs fixed:

• Symlinks in included frameworks should be preserved correctly (fixes Tcl/Tk)
• Fixes some minor issues with alias bundles
• Removed implicit SpiderImagePlugin -> ImageTk reference in PIL recipe
• The --optimize option should work now
• weakref is now included by default
• anydbm's dynamic dependencies are now in the standard implies list
• Errors on app launch are brought to the front so the user does not miss them
• bdist_mpkg now compatible with pychecker (data_files had issues)

Options changed:

• deprecated --strip, it is now on by default
• new --no-strip option to turn off stripping of executables

New features:

• Looks for a hacked version of the PyOpenGL __init__.py so that it doesn't have to include the whole package in order to get at the stupid version file.
• New loader_files key that a recipe can return in order to ensure that non-code ends up in the .zip (the pygame recipe uses this)
• Now scans all files in the bundle and normalizes Mach-O load commands, not just extensions. This helps out when using the --package option, when including frameworks that have plugins, etc.
• An embedded Python interpreter is now included in the executable bundle (sys.executable points to it), this currently only works for framework builds of Python
• New macho_standalone tool
• New macho_find tool
• Major enhancements to the way plugins are built
• bdist_mpkg now has a --zipdist option to build zip files from the built package
• The bdist_mpkg "Installed to:" description is now based on the package install root, rather than the build root

py2app 0.1.7

py2app 0.1.7 is a bug fix release:

• The bdist_mpkg script will now set up sys.path properly, for setup scripts that require local imports.
• bdist_mpkg will now correctly accept ReadMe, License, Welcome, and background files by parameter.
• bdist_mpkg can now display a custom background again (0.1.6 broke this).
• bdist_mpkg now accepts a build-base= argument, to put build files in an alternate location.
• py2app will now accept main scripts with a .pyw extension.
• py2app's not_stdlib_filter will now ignore a site-python directory as well as site-packages.
• py2app's plugin bundle template no longer displays GUI dialogs by default, but still links to AppKit.
• py2app now ensures that the directory of the main script is now added to sys.path when scanning modules.
• The py2app build command has been refactored such that it would be easier to change its behavior by subclassing.
• py2app alias bundles can now cope with editors that do atomic saves (write new file, swap names with existing file).
• macholib now has minimal support for fat binaries. It still assumes big endian and will not make any changes to a little endian header.
• Add a warning message when using the install command rather than installing from a package.
• New simple/structured example that shows how you could package an application that is organized into several folders.
• New PyObjC/pbplugin Xcode Plug-In example.

py2app 0.1.6

Since I have been slacking and the last announcement was for 0.1.4, here are the changes for the soft-launched releases 0.1.5 and 0.1.6:

py2app 0.1.6 was a major feature enhancements release:

• py2applet and bdist_mpkg scripts have been moved to Python modules so that the functionality can be shared with the tools.
• Generic graph-related functionality from py2app was moved to altgraph.ObjectGraph and altgraph.GraphUtil.
• bdist_mpkg now outputs more specific plist requirements (for future compatibility).
• py2app can now create plugin bundles (MH_BUNDLE) as well as executables. New recipe for supporting extensions built with sip, such as PyQt. Note that due to the way that sip works, when one sip-based extension is used, all sip-based extensions are included in your application. In practice, this means anything provided by Riverbank, I don't think anyone else uses sip (publicly).
• New recipe for PyOpenGL. This is very naive and simply includes the whole thing, rather than trying to monkeypatch their brain-dead version acquisition routine in __init__.
• Bootstrap now sets ARGVZERO and EXECUTABLEPATH environment variables, corresponding to the argv[0] and the _NSGetExecutablePath(...) that the bundle saw. This is only really useful if you need to relaunch your own application.
• More correct dyld search behavior.
• Refactored macholib to use altgraph, can now generate GraphViz graphs and more complex analysis of dependencies can be done.
• macholib was refactored to be easier to maintain, and the structure handling has been optimized a bit.
• The few tests that there are were refactored in py.test style.
• New PyQt example.
• New PyOpenGL example.

See also:

py2app 0.1.5

py2app 0.1.5 is a major feature enhancements release:

• Added a bdist_mpkg distutils extension, for creating Installer an metapackage from any distutils script.

  • Includes PackageInstaller tool
  • bdist_mpkg script
  • setup.py enhancements to support bdist_mpkg functionality

• Added a PackageInstaller tool, a droplet that performs the same function
  as the bdist_mpkg script.

• Create a custom bdist_mpkg subclass for py2app's setup script.

• Source package now includes PJE's setuptools extension to distutils.

• Added lots of metadata to the setup script.

• py2app.modulegraph is now a top-level package, modulegraph.

• py2app.find_modules is now modulegraph.find_modules.

• Should now correctly handle paths (and application names) with unicode characters in them.

• New --strip option for py2app build command, strips all Mach-O files in output application bundle.

• New --bdist-base= option for py2app build command, allows an alternate build directory to be specified.

• New docutils recipe. Support for non-framework Python, such as the one provided by DarwinPorts.

See also:

py2app 0.1.4

py2app 0.1.4 is a minor bugfix release:

• The altgraph from 0.1.3 had a pretty nasty bug in it that prevented filtering from working properly, so I fixed it and bumped to 0.1.4.

py2app 0.1.3

py2app 0.1.3 is a refactoring and new features release:

• altgraph, my fork of Istvan Albert's graphlib, is now part of the distribution
• py2app.modulegraph has been refactored to use altgraph
• py2app can now create GraphViz DOT graphs with the -g option (TinyTinyEdit example)
• Moved the filter stack into py2app.modulegraph
• Fixed a bug that may have been in 0.1.2 where explicitly included packages would not be scanned by macholib
• py2app.apptemplate now contains a stripped down site module as opposed to a sitecustomize
• Alias builds are now the only ones that contain the system and user site-packages directory in sys.path
• The pydoc recipe has been beefed up to also exclude BaseHTTPServer, etc.

Known issues:

• Commands marked with XXX in the help are not implemented
• Includes all files from packages, it should be smart enough to strip unused .py/.pyc/.pyo files (to save space, depending on which optimization flag is used)
• macholib should be refactored to use altgraph
• py2app.build_app and py2app.modulegraph should be refactored to search for dependencies on a per-application basis

py2app 0.1.2

py2app 0.2 is primarily a bugfix release:

• The encodings package now gets included in the zip file (saves space)
• A copy of the Python interpreter is not included anymore in standalone builds (saves space)
• The executable bootstrap is now stripped by default (saves a little space)
• sys.argv is set correctly now, it used to point to the executable, now it points to the boot script. This should enhance compatibility with some applications.
• Adds an "Alias" feature to modulegraph, so that sys.modules craziness such as wxPython.wx -> wx can be accomodated (this particular craziness is also now handled by default)
• A sys.path alternative may be passed to find_modules now, though this is not used yet
• The Command instance is now passed to recipes instead of the Distribution instance (though no recipes currently use either)
• The post-filtering of modules and extensions is now generalized into a stack and can be modified by recipes
• A wxPython example demonstrating how to package wxGlade has been added (this is a good example of how to write your own recipe, and how to deal with complex applications that mix code and data files)
• PyRuntimeLocations is now set to (only) the location of the current interpreter's Python.framework for alias and semi-standalone build modes (enhances compatibility with extensions built with an unpatched Makefile with Mac OS X 10.3's Python 2.3.0)

Known issues:

• Includes all files from packages, it should be smart enough to strip unused .py/.pyc/.pyo files (to save space, depending on which optimization flag is used).

py2app 0.1.1

py2app 0.1.1 is primarily a bugfix release:

• Several problems related to Mac OS X 10.2 compatibility and standalone
  building have been resolved

• Scripts that are not in the same directory as setup.py now work

• A new recipe has been added that removes the pydoc -> Tkinter dependency

• A recipe has been added for py2app itself

• a wxPython example (superdoodle) has been added. Demonstrates not only how easy it is (finally!) to bundle wxPython applications, but also how one setup.py can deal with both py2exe and py2app.

• A new experimental tool, py2applet, has been added. Once you've built it (python setup.py py2app, of course), you should be able to build simple applications simply by dragging your main script and optionally any packages, data files, Info.plist and icon it needs.

Known issues:

• Includes all files from packages, it should be smart enough to strip unused .py/.pyc/.pyo files (to save space, depending on which optimization flag is used).
• The default PyRuntimeLocations can cause problems on machines that have a /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework installed. Workaround is to set a plist that has the following key: PyRuntimeLocations=['/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/Python'] (this will be resolved soon)

py2app 0.1

(first public release) py2app is the bundlebuilder replacement we've all been waiting for. It is implemented as a distutils command, similar to py2exe.