gen-exe

A small utility which allows you to generate Windows executables that can run custom commands on your Windows system.

Features

• generate portable executables that can run customizable commands
• commands can use the {EXE_DIR} macro to get the directory relative to the executable
• the generated executable supports passing command-line arguments
• you can add icons during or after generation of the executable
• installation adds two CLIs: gen-exe and add-icon-to-exe

Installation

Install from PyPi using:

pip install gen-exe

Usage gen-exe

Custom commands can be embedded in the executables by providing a command string to the CLI, for example:

gen-exe test.exe "echo hello world"

The command string argument also supports the {EXE_DIR} macro, which expands the path where the executable is executed from, for example:

gen-exe test.exe "echo I am running from: {EXE_DIR}"

This can be used to run relative executables:

gen-exe test.exe "\"{EXE_DIR}\\another.exe\""

Note the use of the escaped quotes \" surrounding the command above to ensure dealing with space characters in the {EXE_DIR} macro.

Optionally you can provide an icon file for the executable.

gen-exe test.exe "echo I have a fancy icon now..." -i path-to-your.ico

Another use case is to call a script or command using a Python interpreter, for example:

gen-exe test.exe "python -c print(\'hello world\')"

For other options see the help:

gen-exe --help

Usage generated executables

Execute them by double clicking or via the command line:

test.exe optional_argument_1 optional_argument_2

Usage add-icon-to-exe

To add an icon called test.ico to a test.exe executable file.

add-icon-to-exe test.exe test.ico

Note that the utility will replace any icons that already exist in the target executable.

Contributing

Fork the gen-exe repository

Setup your forked repository locally as an editable installation:

$ cd ~
$ git clone https://github.com/yourproject/genexe
$ pip install --editable ./genexe

Now you can work locally and create your own pull requests.

Feel free to open issues and pull requests.

Maintainer

Sil van de Leemput

History

0.2.1 (2021-02-08)

• Added hide-console option to the executable and the CLI

0.2.0 (2021-02-07)

• Embedded runtimes in the executable. Executable should now work on Windows systems without VC++ redistributables installed

0.1.1 (2021-02-06)

• Better documentation - updated the README.md

0.1.0 (2021-02-06)

• Initial release on PyPi