freeze script

The freeze script is included with other Python scripts. On Windows and the Mac this is in the Scripts subdirectory of your Python installation whereas on Unix platforms this in the bin directory of the prefix where Python is installed.

Assuming you have a script called hello.py which you want to turn into an executable, this can be accomplished by this command:

freeze hello.py --target-dir dist

Further customization can be done using the following options:

option name	description
--version	show version number and exit
-h, --help	show this help message and exit
-O	optimize generated bytecode as per PYTHONOPTIMIZE; use -OO in order to remove doc strings
-c, --compress	compress byte code in zip files
--base-name	file on which to base the executable; if the name of the file is not an absolute file name, the subdirectory bases inside the cx_Freeze package will be searched for a file matching the name, without regard to the extension
--init-script	script which will be executed upon startup; if the name of the file is not an absolute file name, the subdirectory initscripts inside the cx_Freeze package will be searched for a file matching the name, without regard to the extension
--target-dir	directory in which to place the executable and any dependent files
--target-name	the name of the file to create; the default is the base name of the script and the extension of the base executable name
--shared-name	the name of the file to create; the default is the base name of the script and the extension of the base executable name
--no-copy-deps	do not copy any dependent files (extensions, shared libraries, etc.) to the target directory; this also modifies the default init script to ConsoleKeepPath and means that the target executable requires a Python installation to execute properly
--default-path	list of paths separated by the standard path separator for the platform which will be used to initialize the search path instead of sys.path
--include-path	list of paths separated by the standard path separator for the platform which will be used to add to the search path
--replace-paths	replace all the paths in modules found in the given paths with the given replacement string; multiple values are separated by the standard path separator for the platform and each value is of the form <search>=<replace>; <search> can be * which means all paths not already specified
--include-modules	comma separated list of names of modules to include
--exclude-modules	comma separated list of names of modules to exclude
--ext-list-file	name of file in which to place the list of dependent files which were copied to the target directory
-z, --zip-include	name of file to add to the zip file or a specification of the form <name>=<arcname> which will specify the archive name to use; multiple --zip-include arguments can be used

distutils setup script

In order to make use of distutils a setup script must be created. This is called setup.py by convention although it need not be called that. A very simple script might use the following:

from cx_Freeze import setup, Executable

setup(
        name = "hello",
        version = "0.1",
        description = "the typical 'Hello, world!' script",
        executables = [Executable("hello.py")])

The script is invoked as follows:

python setup.py build

This command will create a subdirectory called build with a further subdirectory starting with the letters exe. and ending with the typical identifier for the platform that distutils uses. This allows for multiple platforms to be built without conflicts.

cx_Freeze creates two new commands and subclasses four others in order to provide the ability to both build and install executables. In typical distutils fashion they can be provided in the setup script, on the command line or in a setup.cfg configuration file. They are described in further detail below.