Re: Intent to backport pyinstaller and pyinstaller-hooks-contrib

Soren Stoutner <[email protected]> Mon, 01 Sep 2025 10:19:29 -0700

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.backports.general
Organization	Debian
Message-ID	<2033379.usQuhbGJ8B@soren-desktop>

On Sunday, August 31, 2025 5:53:26 AM Mountain Standard Time Micha Lenk wrote:
> Hi Soren,
> 
> On 30.08.25 21:40, Soren Stoutner wrote:
> > I intend to backport pyinstaller and pyinstaller-hooks-contrib.  
pyinstaller
> > is in trixie.  pyinstaller-hooks-contrib did not clear NEW quickly enough 
to
> > make it into trixie, but it is now in testing.  Because pyinstaller is a
> > package that moves quickly upstream, and because of how pyinstaller needs 
to
> > be updated to correctly interact with other packages, trixie users of
> > pyinstaller will usually want to be running a current version from
> > backports.
> > 
> > https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pyinstaller
> > 
> > https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/pyinstaller-hooks-contrib
> > 
> > As the current version of pyinstaller now depends on pyinstaller-hooks-
> > contrib, I intend to backport pyinstaller-hooks-contrib first and then, 
once
> > it is in trixie-backports, backport the current version of pyinstaller.
> 
> Thanks for sharing your intent to backport in advance. This helps me
> reviewing the NEW queue.
> 
> What's your assessment on the impact of this backport? Will Python
> packages built using the new pyinstaller remain compatible with Python
> packages built using the stable pyinstaller and vice versa?

Pyinstaller doesn’t really build Python “packages”, at least not as Debian 
understands them.  Rather, it combines Python modules into static binaries.

As such, the primary use for Pyinstaller in Debian is for teams developing on 
Linux but targeting other operating systems like Windows.

However, to answer your question directly, yes, the output of a stable-
backports Pyinstaller would run on Debian stable.  Because the output of 
Pyinstaller does not use any system Python modules (that is the point of it), 
but rather runs entirely embedded copies of everything.

-- 
Soren Stoutner
[email protected]

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