Packaging Python for Windows with Pyinstaller and Wine

If you’ve ever had to deploy Python on Windows you’ll know it’s a headache. If, like me, you develop in Linux, it’s a positive migraine. Hopefully I can help…

I’ve used Pyinstaller v1.5 in the past quite a bit with some success but doing so in Wine on Linux has always been a bit flaky. Since Pyinstaller-2.0 came out a while back I felt it was only right to revisit and see if I could make a more robust setup.

Today I knocked up some scripts to help create and manage a dedicated Wine “build” environment and run Pyinstaller inside Wine to create a “frozen” standalone Windows executable file from your Python source.

Visit the project on GitHub or clone the repo and get involved. On the first run it’ll give you instructions on setting up your dedicated wine environment, but you won’t need to do this again.

$ git clone https://github.com/fawkesley/python-windows-packager
$ ./package.sh /path/to/my/main.py MyProject

… and *fingers crossed* out pops /tmp/MyProject.exe

Feel free to have a play, fork the code, let me know what you think.

Enjoy!