Windows installer for a Python application created within Linux

Question

Suppose I have a working application written in Python on some Linux distribution, I would like to know if it is possible to produce an executable for Windows within Linux, with pyinstaller or another similar program, and how to create some kind of Windows installer for that program that will place the program and some data in a relevant directory. Any advice is welcomed! Thank you!

Accepted Answer

I've successfully used PyInstaller running under Wine to produce an executable which runs on Windows. Set up your Wine environment on Linux, putting a copy of PyInstaller in an appropriate location. eg `drive_c\pyinstaller-2.0`.

Also install Python for Windows in your Wine environment. You have to use the `msiexec` option run the Python installer.

```
wine msiexec /i python-2.6.6.msi
```

You might also need to install other dependencies such as `pywin32`.

Then, simply run PyInstaller on you spec file:

```
wine c:/Python26/Python.exe c:/pyinstaller-2.0/pyinstaller.py <spec_file>
```

This takes care of creating an executable which will run under windows. Packaging this exe as part of an installer is an additional task for which you could use NSIS as suggested in other answers. I'm not sure if NSIS will successfully run under Wine on Linux, so this only answers half of your question.

Windows installer for a Python application created within Linux

Solution

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