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.

fman build system

https://build-system.fman.io

Creates stand-alone executables and installers for PyQt applications. Supports Windows, macOS and Linux.

PyInstaller

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

A short How-To for using PyInstaller with PyQt on Mac OS-X:

cx_Freeze

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

bbfreeze

(Windows, Unix, but not Mac OS X)

http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/bbfreeze/

similar in purpose to the well known py2exe_ for windows, py2app_ for OS X, PyInstaller_ and cx_Freeze_ (in fact ancient versions were based on cx_Freeze. And it uses the modulegraph_ package, which is also used by py2app)."

Mercurial repository: http://systemexit.de/repo/bbfreeze

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/

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:

ExeMaker

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

Tools for Mac OS X

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

py2app

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

Other Resources

How can I create a stand-alone binary from a Python script? from the pyfaq

PyQt/Deploying_PyQt_Applications (last edited 2018-05-30 06:30:34 by MichaelHerrmann)

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