Build .exe from Python script with a Docker container

These are the steps that allowed me to freeze a simple Python script to a Windows executable.

(edit this graphic on draw.io)

Making an .exe file from a script

These steps will guide you towards your very own .exe file.

Prerequisites

You must be able to run Windows containers for Docker.

One way to achieve this is with the excellent StefanScherer/windows-docker-machine repository.

This works for Windows, macOS and GNU/Linux, because Vagrant runs on all three.

The 2016-box will suffice.

Building the Docker image

1. git clone https://github.com/tssmits/docker-python-exe
2. cd docker-python-exe
3. docker build -t buildtools2017:latest -m 2G .

Run Docker container

4. docker run -v C:$(pwd):C:/exampledir buildtools2017 -it

Preparation for building the .exe

Now that you're in the running Docker container, please surf to the example script.

5. cd exampledir

Please initiate a virtualenv.

6. python -m venv venv

Activate it.

7. .\venv\Scripts\activate

Now you can install the required packages.

8. pip install pyinstaller

Building the .exe

Just one more command and your .exe is ready!

9. pyinstaller --onefile hello.py

Running the resulting exe

You can now run the .exe file.

.\dist\hello.exe

Known issues

PyInstaller gives me: "WARNING: lib not found: api-ms-win-crt-math-l1-1-0.dll dependency"

You can ignore these warnings. The .exe will still run. Read more about this issue at pyinstaller/pyinstaller#1566.