Build pystack as a standalone binary

[Yinwhe]

Currently pystack is used as a Python script + requires installing Python + dependencies (libdw, libelf, etc.). That adds friction in some deployment environments.

I made a script build_binary.sh (using Nuitka) to compile pystack into a standalone executable. Then users can just download the binary and run it—no need to set up Python + dependencies.

Do you think this would be useful? If yes, I can open a PR to add the binary build + usage instructions.

[godlygeek]

Currently pystack is used as a Python script + requires installing Python + dependencies (libdw, libelf, etc.). That adds friction in some deployment environments.

I made a script build_binary.sh (using Nuitka) to compile pystack into a standalone executable. Then users can just download the binary and run it—no need to set up Python + dependencies.

You should never need to set up the dependencies (libdw, libelf, etc) unless you're building from source. If you're using the binary wheels that we distribute on PyPI, they've already got copies of those libraries vendored into them.

As far as setting up the Python interpreter itself... can you elaborate more on the use case? PyStack is a tool for debugging Python programs, so it seems reasonable to take it for granted that you already have a Python interpreter if you've got Python programs that you want to debug... Unless your use case is that you want to install PyStack into some sort of base image that may or may not later be used for a Python application?

If so, perhaps just uv tool install pystack would meet your needs?

[Yinwhe]

Currently pystack is used as a Python script + requires installing Python + dependencies (libdw, libelf, etc.). That adds friction in some deployment environments.

I made a script build_binary.sh (using Nuitka) to compile pystack into a standalone executable. Then users can just download the binary and run it—no need to set up Python + dependencies.

You should never need to set up the dependencies (libdw, libelf, etc) unless you're building from source. If you're using the binary wheels that we distribute on PyPI, they've already got copies of those libraries vendored into them.

As far as setting up the Python interpreter itself... can you elaborate more on the use case? PyStack is a tool for debugging Python programs, so it seems reasonable to take it for granted that you already have a Python interpreter if you've got Python programs that you want to debug... Unless your use case is that you want to install PyStack into some sort of base image that may or may not later be used for a Python application?

If so, perhaps just uv tool install pystack would meet your needs?

Oh, it's all my fault — I didn't notice that pystack already has a PyPI release. I'm so sorry!

My idea was:

• I'm dealing with a large number of container profiling cases, so I need to install pystack across many of them, but the current installation instructions are a bit complex and not very "portable".
• So I tried to compile pystack into a single binary so I can easily move it anywhere.

This binary still helps in my cases:

• Container environments are not fully controllable and can be quite complex, so pip install may not be suitable.
• Some containers are not connected to the network, thus installing via pip is not possible.
  In such cases, a binary can be transferred and used more easily.

Again thanks for the guidance!