Wing Python IDE

Configuring the Debugger

To debug code running under py2exe you will need to use wingdbstub to initiate debug from outside of Wing, as described in Debugging Externally Launched Code, along with some additional configuration described below.

There are two important ways in which the environment differs when code runs under py2exe:

As a result, some custom code is needed so the debugger can find and load the modules that it needs:

# Add extra environment needed by Wing's debugger
import sys
import os
extra = os.environ.get('EXTRA_PYTHONPATH')
if extra:
    sys.path.extend(extra.split(os.pathsep))
print(sys.path)

# Start debugging
import wingdbstub

# Just some test code
print("Hello from py2exe")
print("frozen", repr(getattr(sys, "frozen", None)))
print("sys.path", sys.path)
print("sys.executable", sys.executable)
print("sys.prefix", sys.prefix)
print("sys.argv", sys.argv)

You will need to set the following environment variables before launching the packaged application:

EXTRA_PYTHONPATH=\Python25\Lib\site-packages\py2exe\samples\simple\dist;\Python25\lib;\Python25\dlls
WINGDB_EXITONFAILURE=1

In this example, \Python25\Lib\site-packages\py2exe\samples\simple\dist contains the source for the packaged application and also the copy of wingdbstub.py used to initiate debug.

The other added path entries point at a Python installation that matches the one being used by py2exe. This is how the debugger will load missing standard library modules from outside of the py2exe package.

Setting WINGDB_EXITONFAILURE causes the debugger to print an exception and exit if it fails to load. Without this it will fail silently and continue to run without debug.

The above was tested with Python 2.5 using py2exe run with -q and -b2 options.

Related Documents

For more information see: