This project is slightly different from the original one, all to make an executable!

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How it's supposed to be done:

Getting an executable file from this on my linux machine (Pop!Os) wasn't easy, but I finally got it to work, and here's how:

First of all, an executable file is an environement independant file that, in a system that doesn't have any project dependencies installed, not even Python, would run perfectly. In my case, anyone taking my executable file dist/Temp_viz and running it on a debian machine will "hopefully" get my app popping-up for them.

Now, how to make my project (or any Python project into an executable)?

The first step ,right after getting a working project, is to install pyinstaller:

$pip install pyinstaller

Then, you go to your project's folder (where the app file is) and you either run:

$pyinstaller MyAppName.py 

In my case it would be:

$pyinstaller main_.py

Another option is that you start playing around with the options in the command-line, or even better, write a python script that executes the commands for you, and you just run that python script. I personally created the python script named execute_for_executable.py which looks like this:

#!/usr/bin/env python3

# https://pyinstaller.readthedocs.io/en/stable/usage.html
import PyInstaller.__main__

PyInstaller.__main__.run([
	"main_.py",			# Your application that you want to turn into an executable
	"--icon=images/icon.png",	# The path to the icon for your app
	"--name=Temp_viz",		# The name of the executable
	"--onefile"			# whether get a bunch of directories and files or on file 
					# (in this case, one file)
])

You can learn more about these options from where I learned myself.

After running this code, it'll take sometime depending on your dependencies, but after it finishes, you can find your executable under the dist/ folder named with the name you've specified for your executable, or your main app's name.

The build process would produce a build/ and dist/ folders, as well as a YourAppName.spec file. (I removed the /build folder since it was too big and unnecessary for the executable to run)

Now, to run the executable you have to locate it, and type in the command:

$./Path_to_the_location/Executable_name 

In my case, I executed:

$./dist/Temp_viz

Note the point before the / !

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Problems that I faced:

The first problem that I faced was with the Adafruit_IO library, and that's why you see it in this project's folder with a slightly modified name/content and not in the main folder, and I'll tell you why that's the case just now.

When runnin the execute_for_executable.py script, the building process finished successfully but whenever I ran the executable, I get this error:

The 'Adafruit_IO' distribution was not found and is required by the application

Which was a strange error since I obviously imported it and got my project working as I expected.

Briefly, pyinstaller needs to be told where are some libraries sometimes with the --hidden-import MODULENAME option, but that still didn't solve it. Anyway, I simply couldn't solve this problem with pyinstaller alone so I needed to hack my way out of this problem, and my solution was to copy the Adafrui_IO lib into my folder, change its name to Adafruit_IO**_** and make these changes to its client.py file:

from time import struct_time
import json
#import platform
#####################
## Commented this! ##
#import pkg_resources
##                 ##
#####################

# import logging

import requests

from .errors import RequestError, ThrottlingError
from .model import Data, Feed, Group

#########################################################
## Commented all this and made it static! (down below) ##
##                                                     ##
"""
# set outgoing version, pulled from setup.py
version = pkg_resources.require("Adafruit_IO")[0].version
default_headers = {
    'User-Agent': 'AdafruitIO-Python/{0} ({1}, {2} {3})'.format(version,
                                                                platform.platform(),
                                                                platform.python_implementation(),
                                                                platform.python_version())
}
"""
##						       ##
#########################################################

############################################################
## I figured out these values by adding a print statement ##
##     to the original code, and running my app once!     ##
default_headers= {'User-Agent': 'AdafruitIO-Python/2.5.0 (Linux-5.11.0-7612-generic-x86_64-with-glibc2.29, CPython 3.8.5)'}
##							  ##
############################################################

Then changed the call to Adafruit_IO in my code to Adafruit_IO**_** !

--

Then, I tried rebuilding the project and now this error is popping:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘babel.numbers’

You can find the solution to that in this blog https://tekrecipes.com/2019/04/17/modulenotfounderror-no-module-named-babel-numbers/ but it's a really simple one.

--

And now it works (after rebuilding ofcourse ...)

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Running the executable:

Now take the executable file and run it anyway in your Linux machine(Or any other Linux machine).