Alright, I investigated a bit in the setuptools source code and it all boils down to a bug in setuptools (easy_install.py):
# On Windows/wininst, add a .py extension and an .exe launcher
if group=='gui_scripts':
ext, launcher = '-script.pyw', 'gui.exe'
old = ['.pyw']
new_header = re.sub('(?i)python.exe','pythonw.exe',header)
else:
ext, launcher = '-script.py', 'cli.exe'
old = ['.py','.pyc','.pyo']
new_header = re.sub('(?i)pythonw.exe','python.exe',header)
if os.path.exists(new_header[2:-1]) or sys.platform!='win32':
hdr = new_header
else:
hdr = header
The last if statement decides whether pythonw.exe's or python.exe's path is written into the shebang of "frontend-script.pyw". As this shebang is evaluated by the created EXE file, it is necessary that the else statement is not executed. The problem is that new_header[2:-1] in my case was "C:\Program Files (x86)\Python26\pythonw.exe" (with the quotes!), so os.path.exists said it does not exist because of the quotes.
I will try to get this corrected by the setuptools developers. The remaining problem will be the absolute pythonw.exe path. If I create a Windows setup/MSI installer, the shebang will contain my pythonw.exe path ("C:\Program Files (x86)\Python26\pythonw.exe") but the user might have installed Python in "C:\Python26". I'll report the final solution after I've reported this problem.
I posted this over two years back, sorry that I didn't yet offer my solution. Not sure if there is any more modern solution (probably distribute offers something), but here's what I used back then (copy-pasted):
File dogsync-frontend-script.pyw
#!pythonw.exe
# This script will be executed by the primary Python version that is installed, which might as well be Python 3. But
# we want to execute it with the Python version that belongs to this script's path. So let's do a major hack:
import os
import sys
import subprocess
if sys.argv[-1] == "magic":
from dogsync_frontend.launcher import main
main()
else:
# The CPython folder hierarchy is assumed here (<installation>\pythonw.exe, <installation>\Scripts\<thisscript>)
subprocess.Popen([os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), "..", "pythonw.exe")),
__file__,
"magic"])
File dogsync-frontend.exe
Automatically copied from <python installation>\lib\site-packages\setuptools\gui.exe (see below). This file will automatically execute the script <name of EXE>-script.py[w] if I remember correctly.
File setup.py
from setuptools import __file__ as setupToolsFilename
if os.name == "nt":
# Use a customized (major hack) start script instead of the one that gets automatically created by setuptools
# when the "gui_scripts" parameter is used. This way, we don't need setuptools installed in order to run DogSync.
shutil.copy2(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(setupToolsFilename), "gui.exe"),
"build-environment/windows-scripts/dogsync-frontend.exe")
startScripts = dict(scripts = ["build-environment/windows-scripts/dogsync-frontend-script.pyw",
"build-environment/windows-scripts/dogsync-frontend.exe"])
else:
# For Linux, I don't have a solution to remove the runtime dependency on setuptools (yet)
startScripts = dict(entry_points = {"gui_scripts" : ['dogsync-frontend = dogsync_frontend.launcher:main']})
setup(<other options>,
**startScripts)
With this setup, the exe/pyw files are copied to <python installation>\Scripts (on Windows) and starting dogsync-frontend.exe will run the pyw script without a console. Since setuptools did not get any updates for years, this solution is still working.
