Develop Reference

Pyinstaller exe not working on other computer(with other windows ver.)

My platform is Windows 10 and Python 3.9. There is another computer(Windows server 2008R2) without Python. So I'd like to use pyinstaller in my computer and use .exe on the other computer.
I tried simple script print("hello") and used pyinstaller -F myscript.py
.exe works on my computer, but failed on the other computer.
Error
error loading python dll ~ python39.dll
Should I use Python 3.8? Or what should I do?

The problem is that Pyinstaller does not create fully standalone executables, it creates dependencies (E.g. this python39.dll), so this python39.dll should be on the computer which is running this executable. Because python is already installed on your computer, python39.dll is already there and everything works fine. The problem is that machine that you're running this program on probably won't have it.
To fix this there are several solutions:
Install python 3.9 on targets' machine (But in this case you don't need to create an executable)
Include python39.dll with your program
For second solution just create a folder and move your executable into it as well as this python39.dll library. Windows will find it because it's in the same directory where this executable is. You can get this library from c:\Windows\System32 folder (Or where all DLL's are stored on your system) and then just copy it into folder with your executable. After that ship not just executable but this folder with library included.
#Stepan wrote in comments that you can also include this library right in your executable by adding --add-binary "path\to\python39.dll" to your command when compiling. The final command will look like this:
pyinstaller -F --add-binary "c:\Windows\System32\python39.dll" myscript.py

Check if the Python version is compatible with the windows version you are trying to use. I was having this problem with an exe I did using Python 3.10. Did it again with Python 3.7 and it worked.

In such cases it could be a solution to use something like auto-py-to-exe wrap for pyistaller: it knows better which option to set for py converting :)
Also, from my exp, in some cases you should modify yout already normally working from terminal Py code before pyinstaller: for example replace exit() with sys.exit() and so on.

Reduce pyinstaller executable size

I have only one line of code input() written in python and packed with pyinstaller with option --onefile. The exe file is 4577 kB which is almost 5Mb. How can I reduce its size or exclude some auto-bundled libraries?

Ah, You are not creating the build in a separate virtual environment.
Create a virtual environment just for build purpose and install the packages you need in this environment.
in your cmd execute these to create a virtual enviornment
python -m venv build_env
cd build_env
C:\build_env\Scripts\Activate
you will see this >>(build_env) C:\build_env
Install all the packages you need for your script, start with pyinstaller
pip install pyinstaller
Once you are all installed, build the exe as before.
The exe built using the virtual environment will be faster and smaller in size!!
For more details check https://python-forum.io/Thread-pyinstaller-exe-size

The .exe file you create using pyinstaller includes the python interpreter and all modules included in your script.Maybe, the modules you are using have a big library themselves. You can however try using py2exe but it might not work for all projects.The other way to get it smaller is to use a compression program as like, compress the executable using UPX (have a look at this:http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/blob/v2.0/doc/Manual.html#a-note-on-using-upx).
You can also try excluding some items too but at the discretion that removing such items doesn't interfere with the functionality of your .exe.

I had a similar problem and found a solution. I used Windows terminal preview. This program allows creation of various virtual environments like Windows Power Shell (btw. Linux Ubuntu too. Also, worth noting: you can have many terminals in this program installed and, even, open a few at once. Very cool stuff).
Inside Windows Power Shell in Windows terminal preview I installed all the necessary libraries (like pandas etc.), then I opened the path to my file and tried to use this command:
pyinstaller --onefile -w 'filename.py'
...but, the output exe didn't work. For some reason, the console said that there is a lack of one library (which I had installed earlier). I've found the solution in mimic the auto-py-to-exe library. The command used by this GUI is:
pyinstaller --noconfirm --onedir --console "C:/Users/something/filename.py"
And this one works well. I reduced the size of my output exe program from 911MB to 82,9MB!!!
BTW: 911MB was the size of output made by auto-py-to-exe.
I wonder how is it possible that no one yet has created a compressor that reads the code, checks what libraries are part of the code, then putting only them inside the compression. In my case, auto-py-to-exe probably loaded all libraries that I ever installed. That would explain the size of this compressed folder.
Some suggest using https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/stable/ but in my opinion, this library is very difficult, at least for me.

Binaries I created with pyinstaller are incompatible with linux

I used the recent version pyinstaller with the option --onefile to create one stand alone file of my python script. On my Mac it works just fine if I open the file in the terminal (bash shell), but in the Linux bash I get the following error
bash: ./myprog: cannot execute binary file
Is there something I am missing here?

pyinstaller creates an executable that will work on the machine it is run on. So if you run pyinstaller on Windows, it creates an executable for Windows. Same for Mac, Linux, etc, so I'd try running pyinstaller on your Linux box to produce a working executable for that environment. Mac executables are not Linux executables.
This is because (as I understand it) the underlying Python includes platform-specific implementations of certain things. For instance, the os module has a bunch of conditional, platform-dependent imports that will be bundled into the executable. Since it only has access to whatever binaries are available on the platform pyinstaller is running on, it can't produce a version for other platforms.

Linux checks magic number of executable file,
magic number of a Linux executable file starts with "DLE elf"
execute "od -c YUPUR_FILE" and see result

How to convert python .py file into an executable file for use cross platform?

I've been searching through SO for a while now trying to come up with an answer to this but due to my inexperience with programming I don't understand much of the documentation, nor am I confident enough to experiment too much.
Would anyone be able to describe in slightly simpler terms how I would use programs like Py2exe, PyInstaller, cx_freeze etc.? I just want a way for others (mainly friends) to be able to run my (simple, text only) program without having to download python themselves. If there is an easier way to do this I'd appreciate knowing that too.
Running Vista 32bit, python 2.7

There are two distinct ways of freezing python scripts to create executables:
Packing the interpreter and *.pyc files into one exe file-container. Such an approach is used by tools like PyInstaller, Py2exe, cx_freeze.
Creating native code from Python source, usually using a middle step of converting Python-source to C or C++ code. This is done by such tools as Shed-skin and Nuitka. The problem of this aproach is that such tools do not always support all the functionality of Python (e.g. they can have some typing limitations and so on)
The point where you have to start is reading the documentation. Such tools are not just push-and-run style tools, they usually have some configuration that must be implemented (that's the problem of possibly all build systems, and as the project grows, the configuration and number of hooks also grows).
You can start with Py2exe tutorial and 'hello-world' to get acquainted with that how compilation is done. As far as I know it's a simplest way to get your goal.
And the last thing, you can't create cross-platform native executables as their file formats are strongly operating system and hardware dependent.

Download py2exe
Download this msvcp90.dll
Copy your FileCode.py AND msvcp90.dll to C:\Python27\
In C:\Python27\ create new text file, then enter this code inside it:
from distutils.core import setup
import py2exe
setup(console=['Avril.py'])
Replace Avril.py with YourFileName.py
Save the file as setup.txt
Open CMD and type this:
cd C:\Python27\
python setup.txt py2exe
Now go to C:\Python27\dist\ and there's your .exe program.
Source: Manvir Singh

Python scripts can be made directly executable, like shell scripts, by putting the python environment path in the top of the script file.
#!/usr/bin/env python3.5
The Python installer automatically associates .py files with python.exe so that a double-click on a Python file will run it as a script. The extension can also be .pyw, in that case, the console window that normally appears is suppressed.
Detailed description also for linux is here.

Install pyinstaller, a program that converts .py to .exe for python 2.7 to where python is located:
cd C:\python27\scripts
pip install pyinstaller
then move whatever python file you want to compile to C:\python27\scripts, compile from there by using:
pyinstaller --onefile yourfile.py
the --onefile is optional but it packages the whole thing(in this example yourfile.py) into one .exe. Once everything is done there will be 2 new folders along with a .spec file. From C:\python27\scripts open the folder dist. Your .exe will be located there in one file which you can double tap to execute and distribute to anyone who doesn't have python. Hope it helps.

how to make package for my python project

I have a python project, which uses qt(UI) for user input and then creates the pdf using latex.
I want to make full package of my whole projects in some form of exe.
I came to know about pyinstaller, pyexe and cx_frezer.
So which one should I pick up first.
My exe should run in windows 98, xp, vista and linux.
So how does MiKTeX ( windows) and qt get bundle to my exe.
Does I have to make different exe depending upon the operation system.
Any link for reading will be nice.

This might be a viable alternative to freeze and py2exe. Python allows compilation into bytecode. You will have to do this on all of your target platforms for specific python versions. Run in root of your project folder
python -m compileall
See http://docs.python.org/library/compileall.html for details.
After that, delete all *.py files leaving only *.pyc. Note that such compilations must work up to a specific three digits' version of python's runtime, so this is not very convenient.