[tip] using PyInstaller

SQLAlchemy's mechanism for loading third-party dialects appears to be incompatible with PyInstaller's default bundling of modules. If we have a "main.py" consisting of

import sqlalchemy_access as sa_a

print(sa_a.__version___)

and build "main.exe" using

pyinstaller main.py

then running the .exe prints the current version of sqlalchemy-access. However, if "main.py" tries to create a SQLAlchemy engine using

engine = create_engine("access+pyodbc://@my_dsn")

the .exe will throw an error:

Module not found error : no module named 'sqlalchemy_access.pyodbc'

The fix is to use PyInstaller's --collect-all option to include all of the sqlalchemy_access files:

pyinstaller --collect-all sqlalchemy_access main.py