pynsist/README.rst

Pynsist is a tool to build Windows installers for your Python applications. The
installers bundle Python itself, so you can distribute your application to
people who don't have Python installed.

For more information, see `the documentation <https://pynsist.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>`_
and `the examples <https://github.com/takluyver/pynsist/tree/master/examples>`_.

Pynsist 2.7 requires Python 3.6 or above.
You can use `Pynsist 2.6 <http://pynsist.readthedocs.io/en/2.6/>`_ on Python 3.5,
and `Pynsist 1.x <http://pynsist.readthedocs.io/en/1.12/>`_ on Python 2.7 and
Python 3.3 or above, but these versions won't get further updates.

Quickstart
----------

1. Get the tools. Install `NSIS <http://nsis.sourceforge.net/Download>`_, and
   then install pynsist from PyPI by running ``pip install pynsist``.

2. Write a config file ``installer.cfg``, like this:

   .. code-block:: ini
   
       [Application]
       name=My App
       version=1.0
       # How to launch the app - this calls the 'main' function from the 'myapp' package:
       entry_point=myapp:main
       icon=myapp.ico

       [Python]
       version=3.6.3

       [Include]
       # Packages from PyPI that your application requires, one per line
       # These must have wheels on PyPI:
       pypi_wheels = requests==2.18.4
            beautifulsoup4==4.6.0
            html5lib==0.999999999

       # To bundle packages which don't publish wheels, or to include directly wheel files
       # from a directory, see the docs on the config file.

       # Other files and folders that should be installed
       files = LICENSE
           data_files/

3. Run ``pynsist installer.cfg`` to generate your installer. If ``pynsist`` isn't
   found, you can use ``python -m nsist installer.cfg`` instead.

This example illustrates how to use Pynsist by itself, for simple projects.
There are other options which can make it easier to integrate as a step in
a more complex build process. See the docs for more information.