pyinstaller-versionfile 1.0.0

Create a version file from a simple YAML config file

pyinstaller-versionfile

Create a windows version-file from a simple YAML file that can be used by PyInstaller.

Background

Pyinstaller provides a way to capture Windows version data through a so called version-file. The process of crafting such a version file, and especially keeping the version number updated, is a bit cumbersome. This package aims to make the creation of such a version file easier.

Usage

pyinstaller-versionfile provides a command line interface to convert a simple YAML file into a version-file suitable to pass to PyInstaller via the --version-file= option.

A complete YAML configuration looks like this:

Version: 1.2.3.4
CompanyName: My Imaginary Company
FileDescription: Simple App
InternalName: Simple App
LegalCopyright: © My Imaginary Company. All rights reserved.
OriginalFilename: SimpleApp.exe
ProductName: Simple App

The encoding must be UTF-8.

To create version-file from this, simple run:

create-version-file metadata.yml --outfile file_version_info.txt

where metadata.yml is the YAML configuration file from above.

Extracting Version Information

As an alternative to specifying the version directly in the YAML file, there are two alternatives which may be more suitable, depending on the use case:

Link to an External File

Instead of writing the version string directly into the YAML file, you can also specify the (relative) path to another file. Note that this file must only contain the version string and nothing else.

Version: VERSION.txt
CompanyName: My Imaginary Company
FileDescription: Simple App
InternalName: Simple App
LegalCopyright: © My Imaginary Company. All rights reserved.
OriginalFilename: SimpleApp.exe
ProductName: Simple App

Setting the Version from the Command Line

It is also possible to set the version directly over the command line using the --version option:

create-version-file metadata.yml --outfile file_version_info.txt --version 0.8.1.5

This can be useful if you want to use a CI build number as the version.