Pyinstaller on Windows

Prerequisites

• 64-bit Windows 2008/7
• Python 2.7.10 x86 ¹
• pip
• virtualenv
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) or MSVC Compiler for Pyhton 2.7 ²

Create and activate virtualenv

virtualenv c:\venv\pyapp
cd c:\venv\pyapp\Scripts
activate

From now on, we’ll be working within a virtualenv environment.

PowerShell

If you would like to give PowerShell a try like me. Before activate your virtualenv, you need to change your script execution policy via

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

in a privileged PowerShell terminal.

Install pywin32 and pyinstaller

easy_install http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywin32/files/pywin32/Build%20219/pywin32-219.win32-py2.7.exe/download
pip install pyinstaller

The msvcr90.dll Problem

There is a known issue was discussed on StackOverflow. Quick solution is to install the specific Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) which can be downloaded here.

If one test pyinstaller with naive Hello, world program. That issue won’t show up until some binary packages such as _socket or _ssl are used. In my case, it is SimpleHttpServer.

Here is the code I tested with pyinstaller from Python official document.

import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer

PORT = 8000

Handler = SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler

httpd = SocketServer.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler)

print "serving at port", PORT
httpd.serve_forever()

Archive Python app via pyinstaller

pyinstaller --onefile app.py

Then you can find app.exe on the dist folder.

Deploy

1. Install a MSVC redistributable (any version newer than 2008) on the target environment.
2. Copy your app to the environment.

As mentioned above, my app is suffered from the msvc90r problem (I doubt that a serious app won’t). Hence to execute the app without problem, a MSVC redistributable runtime must be installed on deployed environment as well. Note the redistributable runtime newer than MSVC 90 (VS2008) may work with the app or not. I didn’t test it extensively and you are on your own. Some kudos maintain compatibility matrix over different MSVC redist versions on the Internet. Use the google, luke.

Minify/Optimize with Cython

Per this SO question You may have problem to build Cython extension with the compiler. As mentioned in one answer of the SO question, set two environment variables as following resolve the problem.

SET DISTUTILS_USE_SDK=1
SET MSSdk=1

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1. I choose 32bit (x86) to have one binary works for both 32bit and 64bit Windows (let’s take ia64 for ignorant). However you may reconsider this if your application need to work closely with Windows system. For example, a 32bit program need to specify special flag to access registry which seen by 64bit program only. In such case, your code can’t be agnostic. ↩︎

2. The compiler is required by Cython only. You’d definitely wanna try Cython if you care about performance. ↩︎