Statically Embedding Python on Windows

superstatic are the pre-made bits and bolts for statically embedding a Python interpreter with your Windows application.

The standard solution for embedding Python on Windows is to dynamically link with pythonNN.dll. That’s quite like how standard Python works on Windows. Check your install: Python.exe is 27KB in size. Just enough to call into pythonNN.dll.

PythonNN.dll is large: 2.7MB, and it resides in %SYSTEMROOT%\system32. These 2.7MB exclude all standard C extensions, as they live in seperate PYD files.

While you can’t really do anything about the code size, shipping a huge number of files and even a DLL in system32 can be avoided: The superstatic Makefile will produce a single pythonembed.lib file to link with your application. It will include the Python interpreter, and most standard C extension modules.

Building your app with superstatic

Build your app with these flags:

CFLAGS=/GF /MP4 /nologo /EHsc /Iopenssl-$(OPENSSL_V)\inc32 \
    /IPython-$(PYTHON_V)\Include /IPython-$(PYTHON_V)\PC \
    /DPy_BUILD_CORE /MD /W4 /O2
LINKFLAGS=/MACHINE:X86 /RELEASE /LTCG
LIBS=openssl-$(OPENSSL_V)\out32\libeay32.lib \
    openssl-$(OPENSSL_V)\out32\ssleay32.lib \
    Python-$(PYTHON_V)\PCbuild\pythonembed.lib ws2_32.lib

What you’ll still need to provide is the Python standard library. The interpreter looks for site.py and other files from the stdlib on startup, and without them, things might not work the way you’d expect.

If you don’t set up anything extra, your app will search for the stdlib in a directory called lib, just like standard Python.

Dealing with the Standard Library

The last thing to do, is to get rid of that lib directory, so you can ship a single EXE binary to your customers. From here on, I’ll claim “it works”, but you’re on your own with the implementation.

What you can do is, before running any Python code (but after calling Py_Initialize):

hook up the zipimporter
reset sys.path to a zip containing the stdlib

Resetting sys.path from C:

std::string some_path = ...;
PyObject *pSearchPathList = PyList_New(0);
PyObject *pPath = PyString_FromString(some_path.c_str());
PyList_Append(pSearchPathList, pPath);
Py_DECREF(pPath);
PySys_SetObject("path", pSearchPathList);
Py_DECREF(pSearchPathList);

Now you’re down to two files. YourApp.Exe and lib.zip.

Combining both files is now trivial.

Caveats

If you look closely, you’ll notice that Makefile deletes quite a few C extension modules that either can’t be built on Windows or need third party libraries. This includes the bz2, *db, elementtree and tk modules. The exception here is the ssl module, which needs OpenSSL, but the Makefile takes care of compiling OpenSSL for you.

Statically Embedding Python on Windows

Building your app with superstatic

Dealing with the Standard Library

Caveats

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