What does a "version file" look like?

Question

I've been googling this for ages now without results. The PyInstaller manual says:

--version-file=FILE
    add a version resource from FILE to the exe

That sounds nice. I want to put version information in my executables. The problem is that I have no clue what a "version file" looks like and I can't find a single example of one that I can use. I would consider an example of a version file as an acceptable answer to this question.

---

What I've tried

The manual also says:

version
Windows NT family only. version='myversion.txt'. Use GrabVersion.py to steal a version resource from an executable, and then edit the ouput to create your own. (The syntax of version resources is so arcane that I wouldn't attempt to write one from scratch.)

I have attempted this with countless executable files from my system now. I just keep getting these errors:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\pyinstaller-2.0\utils\GrabVersion.py", line 42, in 
    vs  = versioninfo.decode(sys.argv[1])
  File "C:\pyinstaller-2.0\PyInstaller\utils\versioninfo.py", line 33, in decode
    nm = win32api.EnumResourceNames(h, RT_VERSION)[0]
IndexError: list index out of range

on executables that has no version information, and:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\pyinstaller-2.0\utils\GrabVersion.py", line 43, in 
    print vs
  File "C:\pyinstaller-2.0\PyInstaller\utils\versioninfo.py", line 147, in __repr__
    % (indent, self.ffi.__repr__(indent), indent,
  File "C:\pyinstaller-2.0\PyInstaller\utils\versioninfo.py", line 251, in __repr__
    "filevers=%s," % fv,
TypeError: not all arguments converted during string formatting

On the rest.

Answer 1

I might be missing this in the previous answers, or maybe PyInstaller has been updated since these answers were originally provided, but the current docs for PyInstaller teach a fairly simple method for this using a command-line tool provided with PyInstaller (though I missed this section the first few times I looked to the docs).

Point this tool at an .exe file on your system that has "good looking" version info, and it will create a human-readable, commented, editable version resource file that you can use as a starting point.

pyi-grab_version executable_with_version_resource

which by default writes a file file_version_info.txt to the working directory.

Running the above on my local copy of svn.exe produces:

# UTF-8
#
# For more details about fixed file info 'ffi' see:
# http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms646997.aspx
VSVersionInfo(
  ffi=FixedFileInfo(
# filevers and prodvers should be always a tuple with four items: (1, 2, 3, 4)
# Set not needed items to zero 0.
filevers=(1, 9, 7, 30920),
prodvers=(1, 9, 7, 30920),
# Contains a bitmask that specifies the valid bits 'flags'r
mask=0x3f,
# Contains a bitmask that specifies the Boolean attributes of the file.
flags=0x0,
# The operating system for which this file was designed.
# 0x4 - NT and there is no need to change it.
OS=0x4,
# The general type of file.
# 0x1 - the file is an application.
fileType=0x1,
# The function of the file.
# 0x0 - the function is not defined for this fileType
subtype=0x0,
# Creation date and time stamp.
date=(0, 0)
),
  kids=[
StringFileInfo(
  [
  StringTable(
    u'040904B0',
    [StringStruct(u'CompanyName', u'Apache Software Foundation'),
    StringStruct(u'FileDescription', u'svn'),
    StringStruct(u'FileVersion', u'1.9.7'),
    StringStruct(u'InternalName', u'SVN'),
    StringStruct(u'LegalCopyright', u'Copyright (c) The Apache Software Foundation'),
    StringStruct(u'OriginalFilename', u'svn.exe'),
    StringStruct(u'ProductName', u'Subversion'),
    StringStruct(u'ProductVersion', u'1.9.7 (r1800392)')])
  ]), 
VarFileInfo([VarStruct(u'Translation', [1033, 1200])])
  ]
)

edit this to your purpose, and feed it back to PyInstaller as a --version-file, e.g.

pyinstaller [options] myscript.py --version-file file_version_info.txt

Answer 2

Create your Version file using an earlier answer save it as version.rc

Locate the filename.spec file open it. next in that script, locate the:

exe = EXE(pyz,...)

at the end of that entire section add this piece of code to automatically embed the version information on your exe file

version='version.rc'

Save it and then launch pyinstaller again and this time run the installer using this code:

pyinstaller filename.spec 

this will not only create the exe file itself but also include all of your version information as well.

In case you may not have thought about it, replace the filename with your program's filename

Answer 3

I had problems with Pyinstaller --version-file option in Python 3 and I solve it using Simple Version Resource Tool.

With this tool you can show the content of any version resource, just use the /vo option with any executable file: verpatch.exe /vo c:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe

To add a new version resource to an executable file, just follow this example:

verpatch.exe script.exe 1.0.0.0 /va /pv 1.0.0.0 /s description "Your product description" /s product "Your product name" /s copyright "Your company name, 2016" /s company "Your company name"

Answer 4

I found on the Internet a simple package for creating a version file: https://pypi.org/project/pyinstaller-versionfile/#description . After installing it according to the information from the link, it is enough to apply a simple and readable code:

import pyinstaller_versionfile

pyinstaller_versionfile.create_versionfile(
    output_file="versionfile.txt",
    version="1.2.3.4",
    company_name="My Imaginary Company",
    file_description="Simple App",
    internal_name="Simple App",
    legal_copyright="© My Imaginary Company. All rights reserved.",
    original_filename="SimpleApp.exe",
    product_name="Simple App"
)

As a result of its operation, we obtain a file, e.g. as in the answer of @mac . The file is ready to use in pyinstaller.

Answer 5

Please note that the version file uses Python code, so you can give it the .py extension rather than .rc.

This will allow you to see it formatted nicely in your IDE, to check for errors (ignore "Unresolved References", of course), and to do anything else Python allows you to do.