PyInstaller

Quick look into pyinstaller.

Installation and usage straight forward - https://github.com/k4ml/test-pyinstaller

Single file

Generate single executable script in ./dist:-

pyinstallers --onefile script.py

Extra Paths

If your libraries exists in some non standard path such as the system site-packages you can specify it using the -p option:-

pyinstallers --onefile -p /path/to/mylib script.py

Hidden Import

If your app (or libries you depend on) doing dynamic import, such as using __import__ function, pyinstaller would not be able to detect that in it's static analysis and the module would be missing in the final executable. To help pyinstaller discover these modules, it provide hook mechanism but I failed to get it work. Passing the module name through command line options did work however:-

pyinstallers --onefile -p /path/to/mylib --hidden-import=awscli.converters script.py

For a few hidden import, above is fine but as the number grow, passing it as command line option quickly getting out of hand. The hook mechanism provide utility function that can discover all sub-modules.

Data Files

This is the show stopper when you need to bundle third party libraries not under your control. If the library need to access data file, it has to be aware that it running under pyinstaller and make some adjustment to the file path.