Overview

Mussel Python is a versatile tool designed to streamline the process of creating standalone Python applications with pyinstaller within a standardized environment.

Features

• Isolated Build Environment: Utilize Docker to build standalone Python application (with its dependencies), ensuring a consistent and isolated build environment.

• Dependency Management: Easily manage Python package dependencies and versions within your mussel app, avoiding conflicts and ensuring reproducibility.

• Build Automation: Streamline the build process, making it easy to share and deploy your Python applications.

• Portability: Python application built with mussel-python runs consistently across different operating systems and environments.

Installation

Install mussel using pip:

pip install mussel

Expected Binary Compatibility

This section describe compatibility of your python executable after mussel's build.

Linux

Compatibles Linux distributions :

• Any distro with GLIBC >= 2.14
  • Ubuntu 14.04 or higher
  • Debian 8 or higher
  • Fedora 20 or higher
  • And many more ...

Command	Bundled Python*
mussel --python 3.8 [OPTIONS]	3.8.18 (With OpenSSL 3.1.3)
mussel --python 3.9 [OPTIONS]	3.9.13 (With OpenSSL 3.1.3)
mussel --python 3.10 [OPTIONS]	3.10.12 (With OpenSSL 3.1.3)
mussel --python 3.11 [OPTIONS]	3.11.5 (With OpenSSL 3.1.3)

(*) Bundled Python: Python distributed inside mussel (pyinstaller) bundled application.

Windows

Command	Bundled Python*	Compatiblity
mussel --python 3.8 [OPTIONS]	3.8.10 (With OpenSSL 1.1.1n)	Windows 7 or higher
mussel --python 3.9 [OPTIONS]	3.9.13 (With OpenSSL 1.1.1n)	Windows 8 or higher
mussel --python 3.10 [OPTIONS]	3.10.11 (With OpenSSL 1.1.1n)	Windows 8 or higher
mussel --python 3.11 [OPTIONS]	3.11.5 (With OpenSSL 1.1.1n)	Windows 8 or higher

Compatiblity example

Building your application with mussel --python 3.11 will produce:

• An application running on Python 3.11.5 on Windows & Linux
• Compatible with:
  • Ubuntu 14.04 or higher
  • Windows 8 or higher

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have the following prerequisites installed on your system:

• Docker (Install Docker Engine)
• mussel

Write your first mussel standalone app

1. Define your Python application code

Script above will print Python & OpenSSL version

import sys
import ssl

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print("Python", sys.version)
    print(ssl.OPENSSL_VERSION)

2. Build your standalone app with mussel-python

Usage

mussel --python <VERSION> (--source PATH) [pyinstaller options]

For detailed information on pyinstaller options, please reach https://pyinstaller.org/en/stable/usage.html#options

Example below will build a single file standalone executable (-F) from a python script my-app.py

$ mussel --python 3.10 -F my-app.py

3. Run your standalone executable

Executable files are by default created within a dist directory.

$ ./dist/my-app
Python 3.10.12 (main, Sep 29 2023, 07:32:58) [GCC 4.8.4]
OpenSSL 3.1.3 19 Sep 2023

# Try with ubuntu:14.04 container
$ docker run --rm -v ./dist/my-app:/my-app ubuntu:14.04 /my-app
Python 3.10.12 (main, Sep 29 2023, 07:32:58) [GCC 4.8.4]
OpenSSL 3.1.3 19 Sep 2023

# Try with more recent distro... ubuntu:22.04
$ docker run --rm -v ./dist/my-app:/my-app ubuntu:22.04 /my-app
Python 3.10.12 (main, Sep 29 2023, 07:32:58) [GCC 4.8.4]
OpenSSL 3.1.3 19 Sep 2023

# Fedora 40 ?
$ docker run --rm -v ./dist/my-app:/my-app fedora:40 /my-app
Python 3.10.12 (main, Sep 29 2023, 07:32:58) [GCC 4.8.4]
OpenSSL 3.1.3 19 Sep 2023

# alpine ?
$ docker run --rm -v ./dist/my-app:/my-app alpine:latest sh -c "apk add libc6-compat gcompat ; ./my-app"
...
OK: 8 MiB in 19 packages
Python 3.10.12 (main, Sep 29 2023, 07:32:58) [GCC 4.8.4]
OpenSSL 3.1.3 19 Sep 2023

# Windows ?
\> .\dist\my-app.exe
Python 3.9.13 (tags/v3.9.13:6de2ca5, May 17 2022, 16:36:42) [MSC v1929 64 bit (AMD64)]
OpenSSL 1.1.1n  15 Mar 2022

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

Acknowledgments

• Inspired by the need for standalone & environment agnostic Python application.
• Built with Docker and pysintaller.

Contact

For questions or feedback, please contact contact@tmahe.dev.

Happy coding!