Question

I understand how we can package an .exe by pointing PyInstaller to a file. Such like:

c:\Python25\python c:\Users\Mike\Desktop\pyinstaller-1.4\Makespec.py -F -w sampleApp.py

However is there a way to create an .exe with only a string [and not a file]? Such as:

string="""
print "Hello world"

"""

buildApplication(string) #Function Does not exist

Answer 1

To the best of my knowledge, I am afraid you won’t be able to work around the need to create a temporary file with any of the existing standalone executable creation tools (py2exe, PyInstaller and cxFreeze).

What I see as the most viable solution is a bit of security through obscurity, combining the following two techniques:

1. Create a byte-code compiled file (.pyc) directly, instead of the plaintext .py file, from the generated code string, using the __builtin__.compile function (you can find on the source code of the py_compile module how to achieve this. A byte-compiled file will be significantly less useful to prying eyes than the source file.
2. A temporary file with an obscure name and location created using the tempfile module. This file will be relatively short lived, but obviously, a sufficiently determined user will be able to find it and copy it while it existes to be consumed by the executable creation tool.