Difficulties with cx_Freeze and plotly.py

[T4rk1n]

Trying to cx_Freeze a dash app, I get errors that it cannot import pkg_resources in

plotly.py/plotly/offline/offline.py

Line 11 in f727c46

from pkg_resources import resource_string

.

From a google search, seems like pkg_resources is hard to include with cx_Freeze and most solutions requires editing the site-package libs that use pkg_resources. I was only able to get past the problem once I commented out the import in my local plotly install.

I think pkg_resources can be replaced with pkgutils like we use in dash to get the bundle files.
https://github.com/plotly/dash/blob/f94991be2db9a3a640ea680c2cf872611f857eb6/dash/dash.py#L453

[jonmmease]

I'm definitely open to considering this, but I would need to understand the background a bit more. In particular, are there any situations where pkg_resources.resource_string and pkgutils.get_data don't return the same thing?

@chriddyp Do you recall any background on how plotly.py ended up using pkg_resources and dash ended up using pkgutils.

[T4rk1n]

@jonmmease I just tested and they return the same thing, they both resolve the content by using the appropriate loader. The difference is that pkg_resources is part of setuptools whereas pkgutil is stdlib.

[chriddyp]

Do you recall any background on how plotly.py ended up using pkg_resources and dash ended up using pkgutils.

I don't recall. Probably the result of google searches for both cases. They were done a few years apart from each other so I'm not surprised that they are different.

[jonmmease]

Thanks @T4rk1n , after looking into this a bit this does seem like a pretty benign change, and if it helps with cx_Freeze compatibility I'm all for it. This is also as good a time as any as I'm about to run through a bunch of manual notebook testing for the 3.3 release. See PR in #1201. If all goes well this will be in 3.3 in a few days.

[T4rk1n]

Thanks