When wrapping up Python applications to graphically run in Mac OS X, one problem is that informative exception messages are lost. Here's a way to log them.

1 Wrapping Up Python Applications for Mac OS X

By that, I mean for instance using the py2app tool and run something along the lines of:

py2applet-2.7 MyApp.py

This will stupendously well work for applications written both with PyQt and PySide. Note that you will need to suffix the script with .py and that it's a good idea to already give it a first uppercase letter to give the application a name with the right style.

Giving it an icon with --iconfile has never worked for me, neither with PNG, nor with .icns. Once you have the application generated, it's easier to open your icon image in Preview, copy the image and paste it into the icon area in Get Info.

2 Exceptions

Interestingly, unhandled exceptions in wrapped up in a Mac OS X applications won't make your whole program crash. But you won't see them either. One clean workaround is to log them instead:

def excepthook(type, value, tback):
    logging.error('Line %d, %s: %s', tback.tb_lineno, type, value)
    sys.__excepthook__(type, value, tback)

sys.excepthook = excepthook

3 References

• py2app
• PyQt
• PySide
• Logging All Exceptions in a pyqt4 app