Question

I’m using Python 2.6 and PyGTK 2.22.6 from the all-in-one installer on Windows XP, trying to build a single-file executable (via py2exe) for my app.

My problem is that when I run my app as a script (ie. not built into an .exe file, just as a loose collection of .py files), it uses the native-looking Windows theme, but when I run the built exe I see the default GTK theme.

I know that this problem can be fixed by copying a bunch of files into the dist directory created by py2exe, but everything I’ve read involves manually copying the data, whereas I want this to be an automatic part of the build process. Furthermore, everything on the topic (including the FAQ) is out of date – PyGTK now keeps its files in C:\Python2x\Lib\site-packages\gtk-2.0\runtime\..., and just copying the lib and etc directories doesn’t fix the problem.

My questions are:

1. I’d like to be able to programmatically find the GTK runtime data in setup.py rather than hard coding paths. How do I do this?

2. What are the minimal resources I need to include?

Update: I may have almost answered #2 by trial-and-error. For the “wimp” (ie. MS Windows) theme to work, I need the files from:

runtime\lib\gtk-2.0\2.10.0\engines\libwimp.dll
runtime\etc\gtk-2.0\gtkrc
runtime\share\icons\*
runtime\share\themes\MS-Windows

…without the runtime prefix, but otherwise with the same directory structure, sitting directly in the dist directory produced by py2exe. But where does the 2.10.0 come from, given that gtk.gtk_version is (2,22,0)?

Answer 1

Answering my own question here, but if anyone knows better feel free to answer too. Some of it seems quite fragile (eg. version numbers in paths), so comment or edit if you know a better way.

1. Finding the files

Firstly, I use this code to actually find the root of the GTK runtime. This is very specific to how you install the runtime, though, and could probably be improved with a number of checks for common locations:

#gtk file inclusion
import gtk
# The runtime dir is in the same directory as the module:
GTK_RUNTIME_DIR = os.path.join(
    os.path.split(os.path.dirname(gtk.__file__))[0], "runtime")

assert os.path.exists(GTK_RUNTIME_DIR), "Cannot find GTK runtime data"

2. What files to include

This depends on (a) how much of a concern size is, and (b) the context of your application’s deployment. By that I mean, are you deploying it to the whole wide world where anyone can have an arbitrary locale setting, or is it just for internal corporate use where you don’t need translated stock strings?

If you want Windows theming, you’ll need to include:

GTK_THEME_DEFAULT = os.path.join("share", "themes", "Default")
GTK_THEME_WINDOWS = os.path.join("share", "themes", "MS-Windows")
GTK_GTKRC_DIR = os.path.join("etc", "gtk-2.0")
GTK_GTKRC = "gtkrc"
GTK_WIMP_DIR = os.path.join("lib", "gtk-2.0", "2.10.0", "engines")
GTK_WIMP_DLL = "libwimp.dll"

If you want the Tango icons:

GTK_ICONS = os.path.join("share", "icons")

There is also localisation data (which I omit, but you might not want to):

GTK_LOCALE_DATA = os.path.join("share", "locale")

3. Piecing it together

Firstly, here’s a function that walks the filesystem tree at a given point and produces output suitable for the data_files option.

def generate_data_files(prefix, tree, file_filter=None):
    """
    Walk the filesystem starting at "prefix" + "tree", producing a list of files
    suitable for the data_files option to setup(). The prefix will be omitted
    from the path given to setup(). For example, if you have

        C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\gtk-2.0\runtime\etc\...

    ...and you want your "dist\" dir to contain "etc\..." as a subdirectory,
    invoke the function as

        generate_data_files(
            r"C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\gtk-2.0\runtime",
            r"etc")

    If, instead, you want it to contain "runtime\etc\..." use:

        generate_data_files(
            r"C:\Python26\Lib\site-packages\gtk-2.0",
            r"runtime\etc")

    Empty directories are omitted.

    file_filter(root, fl) is an optional function called with a containing
    directory and filename of each file. If it returns False, the file is
    omitted from the results.
    """
    data_files = []
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(os.path.join(prefix, tree)):        
        to_dir = os.path.relpath(root, prefix)

        if file_filter is not None:
            file_iter = (fl for fl in files if file_filter(root, fl))
        else:
            file_iter = files

        data_files.append((to_dir, [os.path.join(root, fl) for fl in file_iter]))

    non_empties = [(to, fro) for (to, fro) in data_files if fro]

    return non_empties

So now you can call setup() like so:

setup(
    # Other setup args here...

    data_files = (
                    # Use the function above...
                    generate_data_files(GTK_RUNTIME_DIR, GTK_THEME_DEFAULT) +
                    generate_data_files(GTK_RUNTIME_DIR, GTK_THEME_WINDOWS) +
                    generate_data_files(GTK_RUNTIME_DIR, GTK_ICONS) +

                    # ...or include single files manually
                    [
                        (GTK_GTKRC_DIR, [
                            os.path.join(GTK_RUNTIME_DIR,
                                GTK_GTKRC_DIR,
                                GTK_GTKRC)
                        ]),

                        (GTK_WIMP_DIR, [
                            os.path.join(
                                GTK_RUNTIME_DIR,
                                GTK_WIMP_DIR,
                                GTK_WIMP_DLL)
                        ])
                    ]
                )
)