executable path finding

[koranthala]

Hi,
I am creating a python application using py2exe. I am facing a
problem which I am not sure how to solve.
The application contains many other files associated with it -
like icons, config files etc. The executable can be in any directory.
If the user creates a shortcut to the executable to run in desktop,
the program fails - saying that the icon image cannot be found. But I
can run the application properly, if I run it from application
directory - where all the other icons, config files etc are kept.
How is such issues usually solved? I do not want to hardcode the
paths of icons and store the icons in those paths. I guess, we can
change the directory to the application directory before running the
application. (in __init__.py ???) But how do we find the current
directory in that case? I am completely at sea in solving this.
This looks to be a very common issue. How is this usually solved?

 

[Diez B. Roggisch]

Hi,
I am creating a python application using py2exe. I am facing a
problem which I am not sure how to solve.
The application contains many other files associated with it -
like icons, config files etc. The executable can be in any directory.
If the user creates a shortcut to the executable to run in desktop,
the program fails - saying that the icon image cannot be found. But I
can run the application properly, if I run it from application
directory - where all the other icons, config files etc are kept.
How is such issues usually solved? I do not want to hardcode the
paths of icons and store the icons in those paths. I guess, we can
change the directory to the application directory before running the
application. (in __init__.py ???) But how do we find the current
directory in that case? I am completely at sea in solving this.
This looks to be a very common issue. How is this usually solved?

You can get the location of a module via

module.__file__

This can be used to find a file relative to e.g. the toplevel module/package
of your application.

The pkg_resources-module of setuptools encapsulates that even into a stream
and file-name api.

Diez

 

[koranthala]

You can get the location of a module via

 module.__file__

This can be used to find a file relative to e.g. the toplevel module/package
of your application.

The pkg_resources-module of setuptools encapsulates that even into a stream
and file-name api.

Diez

Thank you Diez. It was what I was looking for.

 

[ryles]

Thank you Diez. It was what I was looking for.

Also see:

http://docs.python.org/library/pkgutil.html