Hook Configuration Options
As of version 4.4, PyInstaller implements a mechanism for passing configuration options to the hooks. At the time of writing, this feature is supported only in .spec files and has no command-line interface equivalent.
The hook configuration options consist of a dictionary that is passed
to the Analysis
object via the hooksconfig
argument. The keys
of the dictionary represent hook identifiers while the values are
dictionaries of hook-specific keys and values that correspond to
hook settings:
a = Analysis(
["program.py"],
...,
hooksconfig={
"some_hook_id": {
"foo": ["entry1", "entry2"],
"bar": 42,
"enable_x": True,
},
"another_hook_id": {
"baz": "value",
},
},
...,
)
Supported hooks and options
This section lists hooks that implement support for configuration options. For each hook (or group of hooks), we provide the hook identifier and the list of supported options.
GObject introspection (gi) hooks
The options passed under gi hook identifier control the collection
of GLib/Gtk resources (themes, icons, translations) in various
hooks related to GObject introspection
(i.e., hook-gi.*
).
They are especially useful when freezing Gtk3
-based applications on
linux, as they allow one to limit the amount of themes and icons collected
from the system /usr/share
directory.
Hook identifier: gi
Options
languages
[list of strings]: list of locales (e.g., ˙en_US˙) for which translations should be collected. By default,gi
hooks collect all available translations.
icons
[list of strings]: list of icon themes (e.g., Adwaita) that should be collected. By default,gi
hooks collect all available icon themes.
themes
[list of strings]: list of Gtk themes (e.g., Adwaita) that should be collected. By default,gi
hooks collect all available icon themes.
module-versions
[dict of version strings]: versions of gi modules to use. For example, a key of ‘GtkSource’ and value to ‘4’ will use gtksourceview4.
Example
Collect only Adwaita
theme and icons, limit the collected
translations to British English and Simplified Chinese, and use
version 3.0 of Gtk and version 4 of GtkSource:
a = Analysis(
["my-gtk-app.py"],
...,
hooksconfig={
"gi": {
"icons": ["Adwaita"],
"themes": ["Adwaita"],
"languages": ["en_GB", "zh_CN"],
"module-versions": {
"Gtk": "3.0",
"GtkSource": "4",
},
},
},
...,
)
Note
Currently the module-versions
configuration is available only for GtkSource
, Gtk
, and Gdk
.
GStreamer (gi.repository.Gst) hook
The collection of GStreamer is subject to both the general gi
hook
configuration (for example, collection of translations file as controlled
by the languages
option) and by special hook configuration named
gstreamer
[1] that controls collection of GStreamer plugins.
The GStreamer framework comes with a multitude of plugins that are
typically installed as separate packages (gstreamer-plugins-base
,
gstreamer-plugins-good
, gstreamer-plugins-bad
, and
gstreamer-plugins-ugly
; the naming varies between packaging systems).
By default, PyInstaller collects all available plugins as well as their
binary dependencies; therefore, having all GStreamer plugins installed
in the build environment will likely result in collection of many
unnecessary plugins and increased frozen application size due to
potential complex dependency chains of individual plugins and the
underlying shared libraries.
Hook identifier: gstreamer
[1]
Options
include_plugins
[list of strings]: list of plugin names to include in the frozen application. Specifying the include list implicitly excludes all plugins that do not appear in the list.
exclude_plugins
[list of strings]: list of plugin names to exclude from the frozen application. If include list is also available, the exclude list is applied after it; if not, the exclude list is applied to all available plugins.
Both include and exclude list expect base plugin names (e.g., audioparsers
,
matroska
, x264
, flac
). Internally, each name is converted into
a pattern (e.g., '**/*flac.*'
), and matched using fnmatch
against
actual plugin file names. Therefore, it is also possible to include the
wildcard (*
) in the plugin name [2].
Basic example: excluding an unwanted plugin
Exclude the opencv
GStreamer plugin to prevent pulling OpenCV shared
libraries into the frozen application.
a = Analysis(
["my-gstreamer-app.py"],
...,
hooksconfig={
"gstreamer": {
"exclude_plugins": [
"opencv",
],
},
},
...,
)
Advanced example: including only specific plugins
When optimizing the frozen application size, it is often more efficient to explicitly include only the subset of the plugins that are actually required for the application to function.
Consider the following simple player application:
# audio_player.py
import sys
import os
import gi
gi.require_version('Gst', '1.0')
from gi.repository import GLib, Gst
if len(sys.argv) != 2:
print(f"Usage: {sys.argv[0]} <filename>")
sys.exit(-1)
filename = os.path.abspath(sys.argv[1])
if not os.path.isfile(filename):
print(f"Input file {filename} does not exist!")
sys.exit(-1)
Gst.init(sys.argv)
mainloop = GLib.MainLoop()
playbin = Gst.ElementFactory.make("playbin", "player")
playbin.set_property('uri', Gst.filename_to_uri(filename))
playbin.set_property('volume', 0.2)
playbin.set_state(Gst.State.PLAYING)
mainloop.run()
Suppose that, although the application is using the generic playbin
and player
elements, we intend for the frozen application to play
only audio files. In that case, we can limit the collected plugins
as follows:
# The not-completely-optimized list of gstreamer plugins for playing a FLAC
# (and possibly some other) audio files on linux and Windows.
gst_include_plugins = [
# gstreamer
"coreelements",
# gstreamer-plugins-base
"alsa", # Linux audio output
"audioconvert",
"audiomixer",
"audiorate",
"audioresample",
"ogg",
"playback",
"rawparse",
"typefindfunctions",
"volume",
"vorbis",
# gstreamer-plugins-good
"audioparsers",
"auparse",
"autodetect",
"directsound", # Windows audio output
"flac",
"id3demux",
"lame",
"mpg123",
"osxaudio", # macOS audio output
"pulseaudio", # Linux audio output
"replaygain",
"speex",
"taglib",
"twolame",
"wavparse",
# gstreamer-plugins-bad
"wasapi", # Windows audio output
]
a = Analysis(
["audio_player.py"],
...,
hooksconfig={
"gstreamer": {
"include_plugins": gst_include_plugins,
},
},
...,
)
Determining which plugins need to be collected may require good knowledge
of GStreamer pipelines and their plugin system, and may result in several
test iterations to see if the required multimedia functionality works as
expected. Unfortunately, there is no free lunch when it comes to optimizing
the size of application that uses a plugin system like that. Keep in mind
that in addition to obviously-named plugins (such as flac
for
FLAC-related functionality), you will likely need to collect at least some
plugins that come from gstreamer
itself (e.g., the coreelements
one) and at least some that are part of gstreamer-plugins-base
.
Matplotlib hooks
The hooks for the matplotlib
package allow user to control the backend
collection behavior via backends
option under the matplotlib
identifier, as described below.
Hook identifier: matplotlib
Options
backends
[string or list of strings]: backend selection method or name(s) of backend(s) to collect. Valid string values:'auto'
,'all'
, or a human-readable backend name (e.g.,'TkAgg'
). To specify multiple backends to be collected, use a list of strings (e.g.,['TkAgg', 'Qt5Agg']
).
Backend selection process
If backends
option is set to 'auto'
(or not specified), the hook
performs auto-detection of used backends, by scanning the code for
matplotlib.use()
function calls with literal arguments. For example,
matplotlib.use('TkAgg')
being used in the code results in the
TkAgg
backend being collected. If no such calls are found, the default
backend is determined as the first importable GUI-based backend, using the
same priority list as internally used by the matplotlib.get_backend()
and matplotlib.pyplot.switch_backend()
functions: ['MacOSX',
'Qt5Agg', 'Gtk3Agg', 'TkAgg', 'WxAgg']
. If no GUI-based backend is
importable, the headless 'Agg'
is collected instead.
Note
Due to limitations of the bytecode-scanning approach, only specific
forms of matplotlib.use()
invocation can be automatically detected.
The backend must be specified as string literal (as opposed to being
passed via a variable). The second optional argument, force
, can
also be specified, but it must also be a literal and must not be
specified as a keyword argument:
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('TkAgg') # detected
matplotlib.use('TkAgg', False) # detected
backend = 'TkAgg'
matplotlib.use(backend) # not detected
matplotlib.use('TkAgg', force=False) # not detected
In addition to matplotlib
module name, its common alias, mpl
is also recognized:
import matplotlib as mpl
mpl.use('TkAgg') # detected
Importing the function from the module should also work:
from matplotlib import use
use('TkAgg') # detected
If backends
option is set to 'all'
, all (importable) backends are
selected, which corresponds to the behavior of PyInstaller 4.x and earlier.
The list of importable backends depends on the packages installed in the
environment; for example, the Qt5Agg
backend becomes importable if
either the PyQt5
or the PySide2
package is installed.
Otherwise, the value of the backends
option is treated as a backend
name (if it is a string) or a list of backend names (if it is a list).
In the case of user-provided backend names, no additional validation
is performed; the backends are collected regardless of whether they are
importable or not.
Example
a = Analysis(
["my-matplotlib-app.py"],
...,
hooksconfig={
"matplotlib": {
"backends": "auto", # auto-detect; the default behavior
# "backends": "all", # collect all backends
# "backends": "TkAgg", # collect a specific backend
# "backends": ["TkAgg", "Qt5Agg"], # collect multiple backends
},
},
...,
)
Note
The Qt5Agg
backend code conditionally imports all Qt bindings
packages (PySide2
, PyQt5
, PySide6
, and PyQt6
).
Therefore, if all are installed in your environment, PyInstaller will
end up collecting all. In addition to increasing the frozen
application’s size, this might also cause conflicts between the
collected versions of the shared libraries. To prevent that, use
the --exclude-module
option to exclude the extraneous
Qt bindings packags (i.e., if you want to use PyQt5
, use
--exclude-module PySide2
, --exclude-module PyQt6
, and
--exclude-module PySide6
).
Starting with PyInstaller 6.5, multiple Qt bindings in a frozen
application are explicitly disallowed - the build process aborts
with an error if hooks for more than one Qt bindings package are
executed. Therefore, matplotlib
hook automatically attempts to
select Qt bindings to use, based on the following heuristics: first,
we check whether hooks for any Qt bindings have already been run; if
they have, those bindings are selected. If not, the QT_API
environment variable is read; if it is set and contains a valid
Qt bindings package name, those bindings are selected. If not, one
of the available Qt bindings is selected. Once a Qt bindings package
is selected, all other (potentially available) Qt bindings packages
are excluded from the hooked module, to prevent their collection
due to conditional imports in the hooked module.
This means that if your entry-point script explicitly imports a
Qt bindings package before importing matplotlib
, those bindings
should be chosen automatically. On the other hand, if your program
uses matplotlib
without importing Qt bindings on its own, the
Qt bindings to be collected are auto-selected, based on what is
available in the build environment. This auto-selection can be
overridden by setting the QT_API
environment variable before
running PyInstaller. In this particular case, an environment
variable is used instead of hooks configuration mechanism because
Qt bindings selection might be performed across several hooks for
different packages.
Adding an option to the hook
Implementing support for hook options requires access to hook_api
object, which is available only when hook implements the hook(hook_api)
function (as described here).
The value of a hook’s configuration option can be obtained using the
get_hook_config()
function:
# hook-mypackage.py
from PyInstaller.utils.hooks import get_hook_config
# Processing unrelated to hook options, using global hook values
binaries, datas, hiddenimports = ...
# Collect extra data
def hook(hook_api):
# Boolean option 'collect_extra_data'
if get_hook_config(hook_api, 'mypackage', 'collect_extra_data'):
extra_datas = ... # Collect extra data
hook_api.add_datas(extra_datas)
After implementing option handling in the hook, please add a section documenting it under Supported hooks and options, to inform the users of the option’s availability and the meaning of its value(s).
The above hook example allows the user to toggle the collection of extra
data from mypackage
by setting the corresponding option in their
.spec file:
a = Analysis(
["program-using-mypackage.py"],
...,
hooksconfig={
"mypackage": {
"collect_extra_data": True,
},
},
...,
)