General question about packaging and shipping python desktop app

gsteinberg · 02-12-2023, 12:36 PM

I have been banging my head against the wall for a while trying to figure out the best way to package and ship a python desktop app. Calibre seems to have it figured out to some extent. If one of you think you would be able to answer some questions regarding that (or if you know somebody that would) please contact me at gppsteinberg@gmail.com

I am the co-founder of the Demining Research Community, an organization that uses remote sensing and AI to detect landmines, right now focused on the conflict in Ukraine. One of our goals is to create a desktop app and ship it to deminers so they can run computer vision models offline. I have tried PyInstaller which works fine but is by no means as robust and how Calibre does this.

Thank you!!

kovidgoyal · 02-13-2023, 11:49 PM

You are welcome to ask questions here, I will give you pointers. The short answer is calibre uses all custom code I have written over decades to solve this issue. It uses https://github.com/kovidgoyal/bypy to build python and all other native code dependencies for all three platforms. bypy also contains code to "freeze" python and run it in embedded mode which is used by the various exes calibre ships with. bypy also contains optimizations to sleep up python code loading which is especially slow on windows. However bypy is not really a plug and play finished product. It runs only on linux and does its building inside qemu virtual machines.

02-12-2023, 12:36 PM	#1
gsteinberg Junior Member Posts: 1 Karma: 10 Join Date: Feb 2023 Device: none	General question about packaging and shipping python desktop app I have been banging my head against the wall for a while trying to figure out the best way to package and ship a python desktop app. Calibre seems to have it figured out to some extent. If one of you think you would be able to answer some questions regarding that (or if you know somebody that would) please contact me at gppsteinberg@gmail.com I am the co-founder of the Demining Research Community, an organization that uses remote sensing and AI to detect landmines, right now focused on the conflict in Ukraine. One of our goals is to create a desktop app and ship it to deminers so they can run computer vision models offline. I have tried PyInstaller which works fine but is by no means as robust and how Calibre does this. Thank you!!

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02-13-2023, 11:49 PM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,871 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	You are welcome to ask questions here, I will give you pointers. The short answer is calibre uses all custom code I have written over decades to solve this issue. It uses https://github.com/kovidgoyal/bypy to build python and all other native code dependencies for all three platforms. bypy also contains code to "freeze" python and run it in embedded mode which is used by the various exes calibre ships with. bypy also contains optimizations to sleep up python code loading which is especially slow on windows. However bypy is not really a plug and play finished product. It runs only on linux and does its building inside qemu virtual machines.