Requirements

Windows

PyInstaller runs in Windows XP or newer. It can create graphical windowed apps (apps that do not need a command window).

PyInstaller requires two Python modules in a Windows system. It requires either the PyWin32 or pypiwin32 Python extension for Windows. If you install PyInstaller using pip, and PyWin32 is not already installed, pypiwin32 is automatically installed. PyInstaller also requires the pefile package.

The pip-Win package is recommended, but not required.

Mac OS X

PyInstaller runs in Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) or newer. It can build graphical windowed apps (apps that do not use a terminal window). PyInstaller builds apps that are compatible with the Mac OS X release in which you run it, and following releases. It can build 32-bit binaries in Mac OS X releases that support them.

GNU/Linux

PyInstaller requires the ldd terminal application to discover the shared libraries required by each program or shared library. It is typically found in the distribution-package glibc or libc-bin.

It also requires the objdump terminal application to extract information from object files and the objcopy terminal application to append data to the bootloader. These are typically found in the distribution-package binutils.

AIX, Solaris, FreeBSD and OpenBSD

Users have reported success running PyInstaller on these platforms, but it is not tested on them. The ldd and objdump commands are needed.

Each bundled app contains a copy of a bootloader, a program that sets up the application and starts it (see The Bootstrap Process in Detail).

When you install PyInstaller using pip, the setup will attempt to build a bootloader for this platform. If that succeeds, the installation continues and PyInstaller is ready to use.

If the pip setup fails to build a bootloader, or if you do not use pip to install, you must compile a bootloader manually. The process is described under Building the Bootloader.