Deep Freeze: building better stand-alone apps with Python

There's more to shipping a stand-alone python app than just running py2exe over your code. Want to deploy automatic updates? Want to be sure it runs on legacy platforms? Want to add professional touches like code signing? And want to do this all in a cross-platform manner? This talk will show you the tools you can use to make your frozen apps better in a variety of small yet important ways.

Overview

Python has a powerful and mature suite tools of tools for "freezing" your python scripts into a stand-alone application, including py2exe, py2app, cxfreeze, bbfeezee and PyInstaller. But there's more to shipping a stand-alone app than just running py2exe over your code.

This talk will show you the tools you can use to make your frozen apps better in a variety of small yet important ways.

Want to deploy automatic updates? The "esky" package provides a simple API for building, publishing and installing updates, and jumps through all the hoops needed to ensure failed updates won't leave your program unusable.

Need to run on older versions of OSX or ancient linux boxes? The "myppy" package can build a python runtime optimized for portable deployment and binary compatibility with older systems.

Want to add code-signing for that professional touch? The "signedimp" package provides cross-platform hooks for code signing and extends the protection to code loaded at runtime.

Each of these tools has been extracted from a real-life build process for a complex cross-platform application, and each is designed to help make your frozen applications just that little bit better.