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PyInstaller sets the sys._MEIPASS attribute to let the application know where to find its bundled resources. Source: this answer.

I know what _MEIPASS does. What does the name _MEIPASS mean? What does it stand for?

  • This was changed from an MEIPASS2 environment variable in version 2.0.
  • Nothing in the official documentation even alludes to the etymology of this variable.
  • It appears to have been around since the beginning of PyInstaller.
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Jonathon Reinhart
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  • Have you seen this? http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22472124/what-is-sys-meipass-in-python – karthikr May 16 '17 at 23:28
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    @karthikr That doesn't begin to answer my question. I know what it **does** but I want to what its name **means**. – Jonathon Reinhart May 16 '17 at 23:28
  • Google is only turning up New York's Medicaid EHR Incentive Program Administrative Support Service. Maybe PyInstaller was originally developed by people working in New York in the health services industry. – user2357112 May 16 '17 at 23:29
  • @user2357112 I saw that too. I dismissed it as unrelated but I'm starting to wonder if you're right about its origin. – Jonathon Reinhart May 16 '17 at 23:30
  • I can only hope that one day my cryptic variable names are similarly scrutinized. – TemporalWolf May 16 '17 at 23:36
  • @TemporalWolf A cryptic variable name is one thing. Public APIs (which this is) are another. – Jonathon Reinhart May 16 '17 at 23:37
  • The MEIPASS name seems to be inherited from an older project, Gordon McMillan's Python installer (5b5, apparently). I don't know if the repository with all the commit logs for that was ever online. – user2357112 May 16 '17 at 23:45
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    My wild guess: the Japanese パス名, or *pasumei*, means "path name". The パス part can be the transliteration of either *path* or *pass*, so perhaps the original author (who seems to be Italian) thought it would be cute/humourous/reduce risk of collisions/whatever to swap the bits around so came up with **MEIPASS**. – Ken Y-N May 16 '17 at 23:49
  • It looks a bit what a german might write down if hearing `my_path` and has trouble with or doesn't know about the english „th“. – BlackJack Sep 11 '21 at 10:56

1 Answers1

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According to Codewarrior0 (AKA: David Vierra) one of the pyinstaller developers:

It comes from PyInstaller's ancestor, McMillan Enterprise Installer. Not sure about the PASS part, though.

(Source)

Stephen Rauch
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  • Can you link to a source for this quote? Is it from private correspondence or something? Your current link just goes to the guy's Github page. – user2357112 May 17 '17 at 04:50
  • @user2357112, I am an occasional contributor to pyinstaller, and I did in fact get an e-mail earlier with this information. It was however Github's automated email from the issue tracker as the OP entered an Issue. :-) See update. – Stephen Rauch May 17 '17 at 04:56