py2exe fails to generate an executable

I put this in all my setup.py scripts:

distutils.core.setup(    options = {        "py2exe": {            "dll_excludes": ["MSVCP90.dll"]        }    },    ...)

This keeps py2exe quiet, but you still need to make sure that dll is on the user's machine.

I've discovered that py2exe works just fine if I comment out the part of my program that uses wxPython. Also, when I use py2exe on the 'simple' sample that comes with its download (i.e. in Python26\Lib\site-packages\py2exe\samples\simple), I get this error message:

*** finding dlls needed ***error: MSVCP90.dll: No such file or directory

So something about wxPython makes py2exe think I need a Visual Studio 2008 DLL. I don't have VS2008, and yet my program works perfectly well as a directory of Python modules. I found a copy of MSVCP90.DLL on the web, installed it in Python26/DLLs, and py2exe now works fine.

I still don't understand where this dependency has come from, since I can run my code perfectly okay without py2exe. It's also annoying that py2exe didn't give me an error message like it did with the test_wx.py sample.

Further update: When I tried to run the output from py2exe on another PC, I discovered that it needed to have MSVCR90.DLL installed; so if your target PC hasn't got Visual C++ 2008 already installed, I recommend you download and install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package.

wxPython has nothing to do with it. Before Python 2.6, Python used Visual Studio 2003 as their Windows compiler. Beginning with 2.6, they switched to Visual Studio 2008, which requires a manifest file in some situations. This has been well documented. See the following links:

http://wiki.wxpython.org/py2exe

http://py2exe.org/index.cgi/Tutorial#Step52

Also, if you're creating a wxPython application with py2exe, then you want to set the windows parameter, NOT the console one. Maybe my tutorial will help you:

http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2010/07/31/a-py2exe-tutorial-build-a-binary-series/