Frequently Asked Questions#

Problems with running frozen programs#

A common problem is that cx_Freeze hasn’t automatically detected that a file needs to be copied. Modules that your code imports are detected, but if they’re dynamically loaded - e.g. by a plugin system - you have to tell cx_Freeze about them. This is easy using a Setup script:

  • For Python code, specify the module names in the includes or packages options.

  • List the module’s compiled libraries (.dll or .so files) in the include_files option.

  • Use bin_includes to include dependencies of binary files that would normally be excluded (a common use is to include “libffi.so”).

  • Data files are a bit more complex - see Using data files.

Problems with freezing programs#

To determine which packages need to be copied with your application, cx_Freeze follows the imports. If your installation contains a lot of packages, this may lead to undesired behavior, such as cx_Freeze encountering a recursion error when trying to compute the list of dependencies, or the lib folder of the frozen application containing many unnecessary packages. In this case, you may want to use cx_Freeze in a virtualenv. Alternatively, the setup_script also offers the excludes option to explicitly exclude dependencies which would otherwise be included.

Specifying modules and packages#

The definitions of modules and packages are different. See python documentation.

Windows command prompt appears briefly#

If there’s a problem with your frozen application, you may see a command prompt window appear briefly when you try to run it, and then disappear again. This happens when a console-mode executable exits quickly, usually if there’s an error as soon as it starts.

There are two ways to debug what’s going on:

  1. Freeze your application with the Win32GUI base (see Setup script or cxfreeze script). This doesn’t use a console window, and reports errors in a dialog box.

  2. Alternatively, start a command prompt yourself and launch the frozen executable from the command line. This will let you see any error messages in the console.

Freezing for other platforms#

cx_Freeze works on Windows, Mac and Linux, but on each platform it only makes an executable that runs on that platform. So if you want to freeze your programs for Windows, freeze it on Windows; if you want to run it on Macs, freeze it on a Mac.

At a pinch, you can try to make a Windows executable using Wine. Our experience is that you need to copy some files in manually after cx_Freeze has run to make the executable work. We don’t recommend this option.

Using data files#

Applications often need data files besides the code, such as icons. Using a setup script, you can list data files or directories in the include_files option to build_exe. They’ll be copied to the build directory alongside the executable. Then to find them, use code like this:

def find_data_file(filename):
    if getattr(sys, "frozen", False):
        # The application is frozen
        datadir = os.path.dirname(sys.executable)
    else:
        # The application is not frozen
        # Change this bit to match where you store your data files:
        datadir = os.path.dirname(__file__)
    return os.path.join(datadir, filename)

An alternative is to embed data in code, for example by using Qt’s resource system.

Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package#

Python 3.7-3.11 on Windows requires the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable, and because of how this is installed, cx_Freeze doesn’t automatically copy it for your application.

You’re responsible for checking the license conditions associated with the DLLs you have installed.

  • If your license allows you to distribute these files, specify the include_msvcr option to build_exe to have them distributed automatically.

  • If not, your users or your installer will need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable Package. It’s not uncommon for this to already be present on modern computers, but it’s not, as far as we know, part of a standard Windows installation.

    Download from Microsoft:

Single-file executables#

cx_Freeze does not support building a single file exe, where all of the libraries for your application are embedded in one executable file.

You can use other tools to compress the build directory from cx_Freeze into a self-extracting archive:

License for frozen programs#

When a python script is frozen with cx_Freeze, a small amount of cx_Freeze code is incorporated into the frozen program. That code is used to setup and start python, and execute the frozen script, when the frozen program is launched. The incorporated cx_Freeze code is covered by the terms of the cx_Freeze Licensing, which requires a copy of the license to be included with the frozen program.

In order to make it easy to comply with this requirement, cx_Freeze will automatically include a copy of the license, as a text file, as part of the frozen program.

How to install Patchelf#

Patchelf is used in Linux and unix-like systems (FreeBSD, etc, except macOS). In Linux, cx_Freeze 6.10+ installs it using Patchelf wheels.

If you have any trouble with it, because your platform is not supported by binary wheels, please install it using the system package manager or from sources.

To install patchelf in debian-based:

sudo apt-get install patchelf

To install patchelf in fedora:

dnf install patchelf

Or install patchelf from sources.