PyInstaller Overview
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PyInstaller bundles a Python application and all its dependencies into a single
package. The user can run the packaged app without installing a Python
interpreter or any modules.
:Documentation: https://pyinstaller.org/
:Code: https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller
PyInstaller reads a Python script written by you. It analyzes your code
to discover every other module and library your script needs in order to
execute. Then it collects copies of all those files -- including the active
Python interpreter! -- and puts them with your script in a single folder, or
optionally in a single executable file.
PyInstaller is tested against Windows, macOS, and GNU/Linux.
However, it is not a cross-compiler:
to make a Windows app you run PyInstaller in Windows; to make
a GNU/Linux app you run it in GNU/Linux, etc.
PyInstaller has been used successfully
with AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD and OpenBSD,
but is not tested against them as part of the continuous integration tests.
Main Advantages
- Works out-of-the-box with any Python version 3.8-3.13.
- Fully multi-platform, and uses the OS support to load the dynamic libraries,
thus ensuring full compatibility.
- Correctly bundles the major Python packages such as numpy, PyQt5,
PySide2, PyQt6, PySide6, wxPython, matplotlib and others out-of-the-box.
- Compatible with many 3rd-party packages out-of-the-box. (All the required
tricks to make external packages work are already integrated.)
- Works with code signing on macOS.
- Bundles MS Visual C++ DLLs on Windows.
Installation
PyInstaller is available on PyPI. You can install it through pip
:
.. code:: bash
pip install pyinstaller
Requirements and Tested Platforms
- Python:
- 3.8-3.13. Note that Python 3.10.0 contains a bug making it unsupportable by
PyInstaller. PyInstaller will also not work with beta releases of Python
3.14.
- Windows (32bit/64bit/ARM64):
- PyInstaller should work on Windows 7 or newer, but we only officially support Windows 8+.
- Support for Python installed from the Windows store without using virtual
environments requires PyInstaller 4.4 or later.
- Linux:
- GNU libc based distributions on architectures
x86_64
, aarch64
,
i686
, ppc64le
, s390x
. - musl libc based distributions on architectures
x86_64
, aarch64
. - ldd: Console application to print the shared libraries required
by each program or shared library. This typically can be found in
the distribution-package
glibc
or libc-bin
. - objdump: Console application to display information from
object files. This typically can be found in the
distribution-package
binutils
. - objcopy: Console application to copy and translate object files.
This typically can be found in the distribution-package
binutils
,
too. - Raspberry Pi users on
armv5
-armv7
should add piwheels as an extra index url <https://www.piwheels.org/>
_ then pip install pyinstaller
as usual.
- macOS (
x86_64
or arm64
):
- macOS 10.15 (Catalina) or newer.
- Supports building
universal2
applications provided that your installation
of Python and all your dependencies are also compiled universal2
.
Usage
Basic usage is very simple, just run it against your main script:
.. code:: bash
pyinstaller /path/to/yourscript.py
For more details, see the manual
_.
Untested Platforms
The following platforms have been contributed and any feedback or
enhancements on these are welcome.
- FreeBSD
- Solaris
- AIX
- AIX 6.1 or newer. PyInstaller will not work with statically
linked Python libraries.
- ldd
- Linux on any other libc implementation/architecture combination not listed
above.
Before using any contributed platform, you need to build the PyInstaller
bootloader. This will happen automatically when you pip install pyinstaller
provided that you have an appropriate C compiler (typically
either gcc
or clang
) and zlib's development headers already installed.
Support
Changes in this Release
You can find a detailed list of changes in this release
in the Changelog
_ section of the manual.
.. _manual
: https://pyinstaller.org/en/v6.11.1/
.. _Changelog
: https://pyinstaller.org/en/v6.11.1/CHANGES.html