PyInstaller Overview

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 3.7-3.11.
• 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:

pip install pyinstaller

Requirements and Tested Platforms

• Python:

  • 3.7-3.11. Note that Python 3.10.0 contains a bug making it unsupportable by PyInstaller. PyInstaller will also not work with beta releases of Python 3.12.

• 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 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:

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

  • ldd

• Solaris

  • ldd
  • objdump

• 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

• Official debugging guide: https://pyinstaller.org/en/v5.11.0/when-things-go-wrong.html
• Assorted user contributed help topics: https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/wiki
• Web based Q&A forums: https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/discussions
• Email based Q&A forums: https://groups.google.com/g/pyinstaller

Changes in this Release

You can find a detailed list of changes in this release in the Changelog section of the manual.