Distributing Binaries

There are a handful of considerations for distributing binaries built with PyOxidizer.

Foremost, PyOxidizer doesn’t yet have a turnkey solution for various distribution problems. PyOxidizer currently produces a binary (typically an executable application) and then leaves the final packaging (like generating installers) up to the user. We eventually want to tackle some of these problems.

Binary Compatibility

Binaries produced with PyOxidizer should be able to run nearly anywhere. The details and caveats vary depending on the operating system and target platform and are documented in the sections below.

Important

Please create issues at https://github.com/indygreg/PyOxidizer/issues when the content of this section is incomplete or lacks important details.

The pyoxidizer analyze command can be used to analyze the contents of executables and libraries. For example, for ELF binaries it will list all shared library dependencies and analyze glibc symbol versions and print out which Linux distributions it thinks the binary is compatible with. Please note that pyoxidizer analyze is not yet implemented on all platforms.

Windows

Binaries built with PyOxidizer have a run-time dependency on various DLLs. Most of the DLLs are Windows system DLLs and should always be installed.

Binaries built with PyOxidizer have a dependency on the Visual Studio C++ Runtime. You will need to distribute a copy of vcruntimeXXX.dll alongside your binary or trigger the install of the Visual Studio C++ Redistributable in your application installer so the dependency is managed at the system level (the latter is preferred).

There is also currently a dependency on the Universal C Runtime (UCRT).

PyOxidizer will eventually make producing Windows installers from packaged applications turnkey. Until that time arrives, see the Microsoft documentation on deployment considerations for Windows binaries. The Dependency Walker tool is also useful for analyzing DLL dependencies.

macOS

The Python distributions that PyOxidizer consumers are built with MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.9, so they should be compatible with macOS versions 10.9 and newer.

The Python distribution has dependencies against a handful of system libraries and frameworks. These frameworks should be present on all macOS installations.

Linux

On Linux, a binary built with musl libc should just work on pretty much any Linux machine. See Building Fully Statically Linked Binaries on Linux for more.

If you are linking against libc.so, things get more complicated because the binary will probably link against the glibc symbol versions that were present on the build machine. To ensure maximum binary compatibility, compile your binary in a Debian 7 environment, as this will use a sufficiently old version of glibc which should work in most Linux environments.

Of course, if you control the execution environment (like if executables will run on the same machine that built them), then this may not pose a problem to you. Use the pyoxidizer analyze command to inspect binaries for compatibility before distributing a binary so you know what the requirements are.

Building Fully Statically Linked Binaries on Linux

It is possible to produce a fully statically linked executable embedding Python on Linux. The produced binary will have no external library dependencies nor will it even support loading dynamic libraries. In theory, the executable can be copied between Linux machines and it will just work.

Building such binaries requires using the x86_64-unknown-linux-musl Rust toolchain target. Using pyoxidizer:

$ pyoxidizer build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

Specifying --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl will cause PyOxidizer to use a Python distribution built against musl libc as well as tell Rust to target musl on Linux.

Targeting musl requires that Rust have the musl target installed. Standard Rust on Linux installs typically do not have this installed! To install it:

$ rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
info: downloading component 'rust-std' for 'x86_64-unknown-linux-musl'
info: installing component 'rust-std' for 'x86_64-unknown-linux-musl'

If you don’t have the musl target installed, you get a build time error similar to the following:

error[E0463]: can't find crate for `std`
  |
  = note: the `x86_64-unknown-linux-musl` target may not be installed

But even installing the target may not be sufficient! The standalone Python builds are using a modern version of musl and the Rust musl target must also be using this newer version or else you will see linking errors due to missing symbols. For example:

/build/Python-3.7.3/Python/bootstrap_hash.c:132: undefined reference to `getrandom'
/usr/bin/ld: /build/Python-3.7.3/Python/bootstrap_hash.c:132: undefined reference to `getrandom'
/usr/bin/ld: /build/Python-3.7.3/Python/bootstrap_hash.c:136: undefined reference to `getrandom'
/usr/bin/ld: /build/Python-3.7.3/Python/bootstrap_hash.c:136: undefined reference to `getrandom'

Rust 1.37 or newer is required for the modern musl version compatibility. Rust 1.37 is Rust Nightly until July 4, 2019, at which point it becomes Rust Beta. It then becomes Rust Stable on August 15, 2019. You may need to override the Rust toolchain used to build your project so Rust 1.37+ is used. For example:

$ rustup override set nightly
$ rustup target add --toolchain nightly x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

This will tell Rust that the nightly toolchain should be used for the current directory and to install musl support for the nightly toolchain.

Then you can build away:

$ pyoxidizer build --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl
$ ldd build/apps/myapp/x86_64-unknown-linux-musl/debug/myapp
     not a dynamic executable

Congratulations, you’ve produced a fully statically linked executable containing a Python application!

Important

There are reported performance problems with Python linked against musl libc. Application maintainers are therefore highly encouraged to evaluate potential performance issues before distributing binaries linked against musl libc.

It’s worth noting that in the default configuration PyOxidizer binaries will use jemalloc for memory allocations, bypassing musl’s apparently slower memory allocator implementation. This may help mitigate reported performance issues.

Licensing Considerations

Any time you link libraries together or distribute software, you need to be concerned with the licenses of the underlying code. Some software licenses - like the GPL - can require that any code linked with them be subject to the license and therefore be made open source. In addition, many licenses require a license and/or copyright notice be attached to works that use or are derived from the project using that license. So when building or distributing any software, you need to be cognizant about all the software going into the final work and any licensing terms that apply. Binaries produced with PyOxidizer are no different!

PyOxidizer and the code it uses in produced binaries is licensed under the Mozilla Public License version 2.0. The licensing terms are generally pretty favorable. (If the requirements are too strong, the code that ships with binaries could potentially use a weaker license. Get in touch with the project author.)

The Rust code PyOxidizer produces relies on a handful of 3rd party Rust crates. These crates have various licenses. We recommend using the cargo-license, cargo-tree, and cargo-lichking tools to examine the Rust crate dependency tree and their respective licenses. The cargo-lichking tool can even assemble licenses of Rust dependencies automatically so you can more easily distribute those texts with your application!

As cool as these Rust tools are, they don’t include licenses for the Python distribution, the libraries its extensions link against, nor any 3rd party Python packages you may have packaged.

Python and its various dependencies are governed by a handful of licenses. These licenses have various requirements and restrictions.

At the very minimum, the binary produced with PyOxidizer will have a Python distribution which is governed by a license. You will almost certainly need to distribute a copy of this license with your application.

Various C-based extension modules part of Python’s standard library link against other C libraries. For self-contained Python binaries, these libraries will be statically linked if they are present. That can trigger stronger license protections. For example, if all extension modules are present, the produced binary may contain a copy of the GPL 3.0 licensed readline and gdbm libraries, thus triggering strong copyleft protections in the GPL license.

Important

It is critical to audit which Python extensions and packages are being packaged because of licensing requirements of various extensions.

Showing Python Distribution Licenses

The special Python distributions that PyOxidizer consumes can annotate licenses of software within.

The pyoxidizer python-distribution-licenses command can display the licenses for the Python distribution and libraries it may link against. This command can be used to evaluate which extensions meet licensing requirements and what licensing requirements apply if a given extension or library is used.

Terminfo Database

Note

This section is not relevant to Windows.

If your application interacts with terminals (e.g. command line tools), your application may require the availability of a terminfo database so your application can properly interact with the terminal. The absence of a terminal database can result in the inability to properly colorize text, the backspace and arrow keys not working as expected, weird behavior on window resizing, etc. A terminfo database is also required to use curses or readline module functionality without issue.

UNIX like systems almost always provide a terminfo database which says which features and properties various terminals have. Essentially, the TERM environment variable defines the current terminal [emulator] in use and the terminfo database converts that value to various settings.

From Python, the ncurses library is responsible for consulting the terminfo database and determining how to interact with the terminal. This interaction with the ncurses library is typically performed from the _curses, _curses_panel, and _readline C extensions. These C extensions are wrapped by the user-facing curses and readline Python modules. And these Python modules can be used from various functionality in the Python standard library. For example, the readline module is used to power pdb.

PyOxidizer applications do not ship a terminfo database. Instead, applications rely on the terminfo database on the executing machine. (Of course, individual applications could ship a terminfo database if they want: the functionality just isn’t included in PyOxidizer by default.) The reason PyOxidizer doesn’t ship a terminfo database is that terminal configurations are very system and user specific: PyOxidizer wants to respect the configuration of the environment in which applications run. The best way to do this is to use the terminfo database on the executing machine instead of providing a static database that may not be properly configured for the run-time environment.

PyOxidizer applications have the choice of various modes for resolving the terminfo database location. This is facilitated mainly via the terminfo_resolution [[embedded_python_config]] config setting.

By default, when Python is initialized PyOxidizer will try to identify the current operating system and choose an appropriate set of well-known paths for that operating system. If the operating system is well-known (such as a Debian-based Linux distribution), this set of paths is fixed. If the operating system is not well-known, PyOxidizer will look for terminfo databases at common paths and use whatever paths are present.

If all goes according to plan, the default behavior just works. On common operating systems, the cost to the default behavior is reading a single file from the filesystem (in order to resolve the operating system). The overhead should be negligible. For unknown operating systems, PyOxidizer may need to stat() ~10 paths looking for the terminfo database. This should also complete fairly quickly. If the overhead is a concern for you, it is recommended to build applications with a fixed path to the terminfo database.

Under the hood, when PyOxidizer resolves the terminfo database location, it communicates these paths to ncurses by setting the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable. If the TERMINFO_DIRS environment variable is already set at application run-time, PyOxidizer will never overwrite it.

The ncurses library that PyOxidizer applications ship with is also configured to look for a terminfo database in the current user’s home directory (HOME environment variable) by default, specifically $HOME/.terminfo). Support for termcap databases is not enabled.

Note

terminfo database behavior is intrinsically complicated because various operating systems do things differently. If you notice oddities in the interaction of PyOxidizer applications with terminals, there’s a good chance you found a deficiency in PyOxidizer’s terminal detection logic (which is located in the pyembed::osutils Rust module).

Please report terminal interaction issues at https://github.com/indygreg/PyOxidizer/issues.