If you wish to convert Python scripts to executable files that you can run on systems where Python or all of the needed dependencies for the script are not installed, one program that is available for Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX, or Microsoft Windows systems is PyInstaller. If you have the pip package manager installed, you can install PyInstaller by running the command below from the root account.
pip install pyinstaller
To then create an executable file that will run on other sytems with that
same operating system, e.g., you can create an executable file on one Linux
system that will run on another Linux system or create an .exe file on a
Microsoft Windows system that can be ported to another Windows system, you can
issue the command pyinstaller yourprogram.py. E.g.:
$ pyinstaller --onefile findTextBlock.py 110 INFO: PyInstaller: 3.3.1 111 INFO: Python: 2.7.5 112 INFO: Platform: Linux-3.10.0-229.7.2.el7.x86_64-x86_64-with-centos-7.1.1503-Core 113 INFO: wrote /home/jdoe/temp/findTextBlock.spec 122 INFO: UPX is not available. 125 INFO: Extending PYTHONPATH with paths ['/home/jdoe/temp', '/home/jdoe/temp'] 126 INFO: checking Analysis 126 INFO: Building Analysis because out00-Analysis.toc is non existent 126 INFO: Initializing module dependency graph... 132 INFO: Initializing module graph hooks... 303 INFO: running Analysis out00-Analysis.toc 334 INFO: Caching module hooks... 346 INFO: Analyzing /home/jdoe/temp/findTextBlock.py 4930 INFO: Loading module hooks... 4934 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-encodings.py"... 6857 INFO: Looking for ctypes DLLs 6858 INFO: Analyzing run-time hooks ... 6877 INFO: Looking for dynamic libraries 7639 INFO: Looking for eggs 7639 INFO: Using Python library /lib64/libpython2.7.so.1.0 7645 INFO: Warnings written to /home/jdoe/temp/build/findTextBlock/warnfindTextBlock.txt 7700 INFO: Graph cross-reference written to /home/jdoe/temp/build/findTextBlock/xref-findTextBlock.html 7845 INFO: checking PYZ 7846 INFO: Building PYZ because out00-PYZ.toc is non existent 7846 INFO: Building PYZ (ZlibArchive) /home/jdoe/temp/build/findTextBlock/out00-PYZ.pyz 8338 INFO: Building PYZ (ZlibArchive) /home/jdoe/temp/build/findTextBlock/out00-PYZ.pyz completed successfully. 8454 INFO: checking PKG 8454 INFO: Building PKG because out00-PKG.toc is non existent 8454 INFO: Building PKG (CArchive) out00-PKG.pkg 14083 INFO: Building PKG (CArchive) out00-PKG.pkg completed successfully. 14151 INFO: Bootloader /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PyInstaller/bootloader/Linux-64bit/run 14152 INFO: checking EXE 14152 INFO: Building EXE because out00-EXE.toc is non existent 14152 INFO: Building EXE from out00-EXE.toc 14153 INFO: Appending archive to ELF section in EXE /home/jdoe/temp/dist/findTextBlock 14191 INFO: Building EXE from out00-EXE.toc completed successfully. $
When the process is completed, you will see two directories, build and dist,
and a .spec file in the directory from which you ran the command. The .spec
file contains all of the options, if any, used to run PyInstaller and can
be used for future builds in lieu of entering those options again. The
dist directory will contain the executable file that you can
then transfer to another system with the same or similar operating system.
$ ls build dist findTextBlock.py findTextBlock.spec $ ls -lgh dist total 4.5M -rwxr-xr-x. 1 jim 4.5M Feb 3 19:07 findTextBlock $ file dist/findTextBlock dist/findTextBlock: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamic ally linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.32, BuildID[sha1]=0xd02fb9fdfc 9238de0c227621eef89466a34f1de6, stripped $
In the build directory, you will see files like the following ones:
$ ls build/findTextBlock out00-Analysis.toc out00-PKG.pkg out00-PYZ.pyz warnfindTextBlock.txt out00-EXE.toc out00-PKG.toc out00-PYZ.toc xref-findTextBlock.html $
The executable file in the dist directory is the only one
you need transfer to the other system in order to run the program.
E.g., in this case I would only need transfer the
findTextBlock file from the dist
subdirectory to the other system. The file was produced from
a findTextBlock
Python script that finds a block of text in a
text file given a
starting string and an ending string upon which to search.
Related articles: