Portability of Binaries Built with PyOxidizer

Binary portability refers to the property that a binary built in machine/environment X is able to run on machine/environment Y. In other words, you’ve achieved binary portability if you are able to copy a binary to another machine and run it without modifications.

It is exceptionally difficult to achieve high levels of binary portability for various reasons.

PyOxidizer is capable of building binaries that are highly portable. However, the steps for doing so can be nuanced and vary substantially by operating system and target platform.

This document outlines some general strategies for tackling binary portability. Please also consult the various platform-specific documentation on this topic:

• Distribution Considerations for Linux

• Distribution Considerations for macOS

• Distribution Considerations for Windows

Important

Please create issues at https://github.com/indygreg/PyOxidizer/issues when documentation on this subject is inaccurate or lacks critical details.

Using pyoxidizer analyze For Assessing Binary Portability

The pyoxidizer analyze command can be used to analyze the contents of executables and libraries. It can be used as a PyOxidizer-specific tool for assessing the portability of built binaries.

For example, for ELF binaries (the binary format used on Linux), this command will list all shared library dependencies and analyze glibc symbol versions and print out which Linux distribution versions it thinks the binary is compatible with.

Note

pyoxidizer analyze is not yet feature complete on all platforms.