pyinstaller: popen doesn't run after producing exe

Question

I compiled my python application using pyinstaller and the exe works fine, but when I run it on a different machine without python any part of the code which contains subprocess.Popen() doesn't run.

I read too many questions but I couldn't wrap my head around this.

My popen line:

try:
            process = subprocess.Popen(['python', os.path.abspath('about.py')],stdout=subprocess.PIPE,stderr=subprocess.PIPE,stdin=subprocess.PIPE,
                shell=True)

except Exception as e:
            print(e)

Note that the executable runs on the host machine, but on another machines it runs but fails when launching the popen.

===UPDATE====

The console shows nothing and doesn't print an exception, so I guess this is a problem with python not being found. How can I fix this?

===UPDATE2====

Following the suggestion of viilpe I used "exec(open..." but it required me to import the about.py module first; importing the module runs it on top of the main module.

Putting exec(open...) inside the try\except runs the main module and the about module alongside each other; ruining the application's GUI.

I'm using "kivy" as my GUI library.

Answer 1

Looks like you want to execute about.py but there is no python.exe in pyinstaller bundle. As advised here you can do it this way:

exec(open('about.py').read())

Answer 2

The whole point of PyInstaller is to make the destination computer be able to run your script without having a standalone python installation. You can't run a subprocess on a tool which isn't (necessarily) installed.

There are various ways to run Python as a subprocess of itself natively; start by exploring the multiprocessing library.

If the requirement to run Python twice is not a hard one, the absolutely simplest solution is to import about and run the code as part of your script. This probably requires some refactoring of the code in about.py .