"[Errno 13] Permission denied" using Pyinstaller in Virtual Environment

[enricodragoni]

Hi All,

I am having an issue with pyinstaller, which I think is likely due to permissions (I am on Windows 11).
In summary, when I run the pyinstaller.exe which is inside the "default" python installation (C:\Program Files\Python3.12\Scripts\pyinstaller.exe), the target EXE is built.
When I am doing the same but from my Virtual Environment (..env\Scripts\pyinstaller.exe), the execution seems normal until I get the following error just before the EXE is built:

WARNING: Execution of 'set_exe_build_timestamp' failed on attempt #1 / 20: Exception("Unable to access file 'D:\\MyProject\\dist\\myscript.exe': [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'D:\\MyProject\\dist\\myscript.exe'"). Retrying in 0.05 second(s)...

So it looks like there is a permission issue for the Virtual Environment when it comes to write the EXE.

How do I give permission to the Virtual Environment's pyinstaller.exe? I have tried to move the Virtual Environment to the same folder where the central Python installation is located, but it still didn't work.

Thanks in advance.

[rokm]

What happens if you manually remove d:\MyProject\dist before running PyInstaller, or if you run it with added --clean option (which should try to remove the dist directory). Does it fail with the same error, and at the same step?

[enricodragoni]

I have tried that too but still I get the Permission Denied. The issue seems to be really when pyinstaller.exe is run from the Virtual Environment.

[rokm]

Something is blocking the access to the file - for example, anti-virus program. Or there might be some locking delay issues if d:\ is a shared network drive or somesuch.

Does the warning repeat for 20 attempts and result in error, or do you get only couple of such warnings and the build ultimately succeeds?

[enricodragoni]

It performs 9 attempts and finally stops the execution with:
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified: 'D:\\MyProject\\dist\\myscript.exe'

[rokm]

FileNotFoundError: [WinError 2] The system cannot find the file specified: 'D:\\MyProject\\dist\\myscript.exe'

I'd say that's a pretty good indicator that this is your anti-virus program interfering with the build.