• Deploying PyQt Applications

Deploying PyQt Applications

This page contains information about some of the tools that could be used to deploy PyQt applications on various platforms, typically in binary form.

The idea is that each solution should be listed along with a brief description and a link to its home page. The description should probably come from the solution's home page or documentation, so that it is described "in its own words". Further comments and links for each can be given after these fields.

Cross-Platform Solutions

The following tools are cross-platform, working on Windows and some flavours of Unix.

PyInstaller

http://pyinstaller.python-hosting.com/

• "PyInstaller is a program that converts (packages) Python programs into stand-alone executables, under Windows, Linux and Irix."

PyQt4: in order to make PyQt4 work correctly with PyInstaller you have to create a file "hook-PyQt4.py" in the hooks/ folder of PyInstaller and put the line "hiddenimports = ['sip']" into it.

cx_Freeze

http://starship.python.net/crew/atuining/cx_Freeze/index.html

• "cx_Freeze is a set of utilities for freezing Python scripts into executables using many of the techniques found in Thomas Heller's py2exe, Gordon McMillan's Installer and the Freeze utility that ships with Python itself."

Freeze

The original freeze tool that embeds Python bytecode into executables is supplied with Python - look in the examples/Tools directory.

qmake

For applications that don't depend too much on many shared library modules other than the ones shipped with PyQt, it may be possible to take advantage of qmake's features and a simple launcher application to create binaries for different platforms.

Tools for Windows

The following tools are designed to produce executables for Windows.

py2exe

http://www.py2exe.org/

• "py2exe is a Python Distutils extension which converts Python scripts into executable Windows programs, able to run without requiring a Python installation."

Comments: I highly recommend py2exe which can produce nice executables. Combined with InnoSetup, you get a full standard windows application and the user has no idea that the stuff was actually developed on Linux with Open Source technologies. -- Philippe Fremy

See the following links for more information about deploying PyQt applications with py2exe:

• http://www.py2exe.org/index.cgi/Py2exeAndPyQt

• http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2007-September/458364.html

ExeMaker

http://effbot.org/zone/exemaker.htm

• "ExeMaker is a small tool that takes a Python script, copies it to a program directory, and creates a Windows EXE file in the same directory."

Tools for Mac OS X

The following tools are designed to produce executables for Mac OS X.

py2app

http://undefined.org/python/#py2app

• "A distutils extension which converts python scripts into executable Mac OS X applications, able to run without requiring an existing Python installation."