Pyinstaller throwing AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'groups' error

Question

I am trying to create a simple standalone script with pyinstaller. The script only uses pandas and pdfminer packages. I have also created a fresh environment with only these two packages and their dependencies installed. I get the below error when running pyinstaller --onefile ema_pdf_reader.spec and my .spec file looks like this:

# -*- mode: python ; coding: utf-8 -*-

block_cipher = None


a = Analysis(['ema_pdf_reader.py'],
             pathex=['/home/erik/PycharmProjects/simple_gui'],
             binaries=[],
             datas=[],
             hiddenimports=['pandas','pdfminer'],
             hookspath=[],
             runtime_hooks=[],
             excludes=[],
             win_no_prefer_redirects=False,
             win_private_assemblies=False,
             cipher=block_cipher,
             noarchive=False)
pyz = PYZ(a.pure, a.zipped_data,
             cipher=block_cipher)
exe = EXE(pyz,
          a.scripts,
          a.binaries,
          a.zipfiles,
          a.datas,
          [],
          name='ema_pdf_reader',
          debug=False,
          bootloader_ignore_signals=False,
          strip=False,
          upx=True,
          upx_exclude=[],
          runtime_tmpdir=None,
          console=True )

ERROR:

(clean_env) [erik@liara simple_gui]$ pyinstaller --onefile ema_pdf_reader.spec 
34 INFO: PyInstaller: 3.6
34 INFO: Python: 3.8.2 (conda)
69 INFO: Platform: Linux-5.10.15-1-MANJARO-x86_64-with-glibc2.10
72 INFO: UPX is not available.
73 INFO: Extending PYTHONPATH with paths
['/home/erik/PycharmProjects/simple_gui',
 '/home/erik/PycharmProjects/simple_gui']
73 INFO: checking Analysis
73 INFO: Building Analysis because Analysis-00.toc is non existent
73 INFO: Initializing module dependency graph...
74 INFO: Caching module graph hooks...
78 INFO: Analyzing base_library.zip ...
2247 INFO: Processing pre-find module path hook   distutils
2247 INFO: distutils: retargeting to non-venv dir '/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8'
4327 INFO: Caching module dependency graph...
4424 INFO: running Analysis Analysis-00.toc
4448 INFO: Analyzing ema_pdf_reader.py
5378 INFO: Processing pre-safe import module hook   six.moves
6929 INFO: Processing pre-find module path hook   site
6929 INFO: site: retargeting to fake-dir '/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/fake-modules'
12802 INFO: Processing module hooks...
12802 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-xml.etree.cElementTree.py"...
12803 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-numpy.py"...
12803 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-pytz.py"...
12816 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-pandas.py"...
13457 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-distutils.py"...
13459 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-pkg_resources.py"...
13672 INFO: Processing pre-safe import module hook   win32com
13879 WARNING: Hidden import "pkg_resources.py2_warn" not found!
13881 INFO: Excluding import '__main__'
13882 INFO:   Removing import of __main__ from module pkg_resources
13883 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-pydoc.py"...
13883 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-_tkinter.py"...
13974 INFO: checking Tree
13979 INFO: checking Tree
13983 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-sysconfig.py"...
13993 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-cryptography.py"...
14149 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-setuptools.py"...
14570 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-encodings.py"...
14619 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-lib2to3.py"...
14621 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-sqlite3.py"...
14665 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-numpy.core.py"...
14666 INFO: MKL libraries found when importing numpy. Adding MKL to binaries
14667 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-xml.py"...
14790 INFO: Looking for ctypes DLLs
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/bin/pyinstaller", line 11, in <module>
    sys.exit(run())
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/__main__.py", line 114, in run
    run_build(pyi_config, spec_file, **vars(args))
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/__main__.py", line 65, in run_build
    PyInstaller.building.build_main.main(pyi_config, spec_file, **kwargs)
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/building/build_main.py", line 734, in main
    build(specfile, kw.get('distpath'), kw.get('workpath'), kw.get('clean_build'))
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/building/build_main.py", line 681, in build
    exec(code, spec_namespace)
  File "ema_pdf_reader.spec", line 6, in <module>
    a = Analysis(['ema_pdf_reader.py'],
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/building/build_main.py", line 244, in __init__
    self.__postinit__()
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/building/datastruct.py", line 160, in __postinit__
    self.assemble()
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/building/build_main.py", line 440, in assemble
    ctypes_binaries = scan_code_for_ctypes(co)
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/depend/utils.py", line 143, in scan_code_for_ctypes
    binaries = _resolveCtypesImports(binaries)
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/depend/utils.py", line 317, in _resolveCtypesImports
    load_ldconfig_cache()
  File "/home/erik/miniconda3/envs/clean_env/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyInstaller/depend/utils.py", line 400, in load_ldconfig_cache
    path = m.groups()[-1]
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'groups'

Do I need to specify some other settings in my .spec file? So far I just added external packages to hiddenimports, rest of the .spec file was auto generated with pyi-makespec --onefile ema_pdf_reader.py

Script by it self runs fine and creating standalone scripts that only use standard libraries also works with no problem.

UPDATE 1:

The error must be due to ctype DLL detection. It happens when importing numpy as well. I have tried with different versions of pyinstaller (3.6 and 4.2) and the error persists. I also tried reinstalling pyinstaller with pip instead of conda and it didn't help.

UPDATE 2: Executing same procedure on a windows machine works as expected

Answer 1

It seems here (https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/issues/5552) they found something similar. Their setup is quite similar to mine. Still reading...

EDIT 1: I finally made it work. Had to:

1.-edit manually file "utils.py" and add the missing condition

2.-reinstall my version of Python (3.7.4) with shared libraries enabled

Still have to test the final result.