How can I make PyInstaller understand the encoding of my CSV file?

I have a finished Kivy app where everything works as intended, in this GitHub repository.

Now I'm trying to use PyInstaller to build an .exe (not a standalone file, but a folder).

This is the PyInstaller .spec file:

a = Analysis(
    ['D:\\Documents\\PyCharm projects\\PyCharm projects\\DesktopApp\\SaniStore_logo.ico', 'D:\\Documents\\PyCharm projects\\PyCharm projects\\DesktopApp\\main.py'],
    pathex=[],
    binaries=[],
    datas=[
    ("D:\Documents\PyCharm projects\PyCharm projects\DesktopApp\Components_data.csv", "."),],
    hiddenimports=[],
    hookspath=[],
    hooksconfig={},
    runtime_hooks=[],
    excludes=[],
    noarchive=False,
    decode=False
)
pyz = PYZ(a.pure)
a.datas += [('Code\sanistore.kv','D:\\Documents\\PyCharm projects\\PyCharm projects\\DesktopApp\\sanistore.kv','DATA')]
exe = EXE(
    pyz,
    a.scripts,
    [],
    exclude_binaries=True,
    name='SaniStore',
    debug=False,
    bootloader_ignore_signals=False,
    strip=False,
    upx=True,
    console=True,
    disable_windowed_traceback=False,
    argv_emulation=False,
    target_arch=None,
    codesign_identity=None,
    entitlements_file=None,
)
coll = COLLECT(
    exe,
    Tree('D:\\Documents\\PyCharm projects\\PyCharm projects\\DesktopApp\\'),
    a.binaries,
    a.datas,
    *[Tree(p) for p in (sdl2.dep_bins + glew.dep_bins)],
    strip=False,
    upx=True,
    upx_exclude=[],
    name='SaniStore',
)

When I tried to create the .exe, I got a UnicodeDecodeError with this traceback:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\runpy.py", line 196, in _run_module_as_main
    return _run_code(code, main_globals, None,
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\runpy.py", line 86, in _run_code
    exec(code, run_globals)
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\Scripts\pyinstaller.exe\__main__.py", line 7, in <module>
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\__main__.py", line 205, in _console_script_run
    run()
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\__main__.py", line 189, in run
    run_build(pyi_config, spec_file, **vars(args))
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\__main__.py", line 61, in run_build
    PyInstaller.building.build_main.main(pyi_config, spec_file, **kwargs)
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\building\build_main.py", line 1042, in main
    build(specfile, distpath, workpath, clean_build)
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\building\build_main.py", line 982, in build
    exec(code, spec_namespace)
  File "SaniStore.spec", line 5, in <module>
    a = Analysis(
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\building\build_main.py", line 468, in __init__
    self.__postinit__()
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\building\datastruct.py", line 184, in __postinit__
    self.assemble()
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\building\build_main.py", line 606, in assemble
    priority_scripts.append(self.graph.add_script(script))
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\depend\analysis.py", line 268, in add_script
    self._top_script_node = super().add_script(pathname)
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\lib\modulegraph\modulegraph.py", line 1246, in add_script
    contents = fp.read() + '\n'
  File "C:\Users\danie\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python310\lib\codecs.py", line 322, in decode
    (result, consumed) = self._buffer_decode(data, self.errors, final)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xb0 in position 14: invalid start byte

My understanding is that the problem has something to do with characters somewhere in my code that the UTF-8 doesn't accept.

I found many ideas about how to solve the problem, but none of them worked for me. Most of them were related to my .csv database.

For example I changed my code accordingly from:

main_script_directory = os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
csv_file_path = os.path.join(main_script_directory, "Components_data.csv")
self.df = pd.read_csv(csv_file_path, encoding='utf-8')

to:

with open(csv_file_path, 'rb') as f:
    contents = f.read()
self.df = pd.read_csv(io.BytesIO(contents), encoding='utf-8')

But it did not fix the problem. I also tried changing the encoding format to 'utf-8-sig', 'latin1' etc. without any change.

What is wrong, and how do I fix it?

Solution

You are including the the icon file at the start of the spec file where python scripts are expected. So Pyinstaller is trying to analyze the icon as a python script. Remove the icon file from that list and include it in the datas list.