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Comment by globular-toast | Hacker News Reader

Why does it matter if a program is a self-contained binary? It seems like such an odd requirement. If you really want that it seems in principle easy to compile it all into one script with no imports and put a shebang at the top. What's the point, though?

Pyinstaller is pretty good for if you need a standalone installer.

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> Why does it matter if a program is a self-contained binary?

Because simple is better than complex. I'd rather download a binary than download a binary + dependencies + set them up + bookkeep for when I want to delete all those files.

> Pyinstaller is pretty good for if you need a standalone installer.

PyInstaller doesn't work for many edge cases. If you're using a Python package that uses a compiled binary written in another language, good luck on your way down the rabbit hole of PyInstaller config. I personally could not succeed in packaging a uvicorn app, for example.

> I personally could not succeed in packaging a uvicorn app, for example.

I kinda did managed to run a fastapi with uvicorn and pyinstaller. And I did nothing special

> And I did nothing special.

I just took the example app from uvicorn.org:

    # main.py
    import uvicorn

    async def app(scope, receive, send):
        assert scope['type'] == 'http'

        await send({
            'type': 'http.response.start',
            'status': 200,
            'headers': [
                [b'content-type', b'text/plain'],
            ],
        })
        await send({
            'type': 'http.response.body',
            'body': b'Hello, world!',
        })

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        uvicorn.run('main:app', port=5000, log_level="info")

And ran "pyinstaller --onefile main.py" on it. The resulting binary, when executed, just says:

    Error loading ASGI app. Could not import module "main".

Please share what exactly did you do that made it work. I already assume it's far from "nothing special"...

My guess is that the main.py file is at the wrong location. Possibly dist/main.py aka dist.main:app.

#main.py

    from src.webserver import app
    import uvicorn

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        uvicorn.run(
        app,
        host='0.0.0.0',
        port=8080,
    )

#webserver

    from fastapi import FastAPI
    app = FastAPI()

    @app.get('/')
    async def home():
        return {
            "home": True
        }

    @app.on_event("startup")
    async def startup_event():
        import webbrowser
        ip_address = "http://localhost:8080/"
        webbrowser.open(ip_address)

#create a python file for pyinstaller

    import PyInstaller.__main__

    if __name__ == '__main__':
        name = "test"
        pyinstaller_list = [
            'main.py',
            f'--name={name}',
            '--clean',
            '--onefile',
        ]
        PyInstaller.__main__.run(pyinstaller_list)

I remember reading this part 'main:app' where you should import the app instead for pyinstaller.

You are right. I think I've misremembered the module name - it was uwsgi, not uvicorn.

This is a github issue where I discussed my original issue with PyInstaller devs - the dev explained the situation very well: https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/issues/6362

We've had package managers for like, 30 years?

Each and every one of you?

Self contained binaries are very easy to distribute and use.

> Why does it matter if a program is a self-contained binary? It seems like such an odd requirement.

Because sometimes I just want to write `my_program | your_program` without learning how to install and set up a program in a language I don't personally use, particularly when that language has the worst packaging ecosystem of any mainstream language.

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