New rebase of pyinstaller branch with fixes and updated modules

[edevil]

Based on #238 I corrected the build script, updated modules and tested the generated artifacts on Mac, Linux and Windows. They all seemed to start up correctly.

cc @xyzz

[xyzz]

from some quick testing it fails at least on ubuntu 22.04 and debian 12. the web release needs to be tested as well to make sure it still builds

[edevil]

It should be just a matter of building the linux version in an older distro. I just changed it to build on ubuntu 22.04. Unfortunately I don't have an easy way to test on that version.

As for the web version, how can I test it? The CI doesn't seem to test it.

[edevil]

I span up a ubuntu 22.04 VM and the latest version starts up. Can you point me to the web version?

[edevil]

Hey @xyzz , can you tell me how I can test the web version, please?

[xyzz]

there's a description in the readme here - https://github.com/vial-kb/vial-web

[edevil]

@xyzz build seems to have succeeded

 ~/work/vc/vial-web/src  main  ls -l build                                                                                            ✔  41s
total 32192
-rw-rw-r-- 1 andre andre    24456 mar  8 16:44 icon.png
-rw-rw-r-- 1 andre andre     6963 mar  8 16:44 index.html
-rw-rw-r-- 1 andre andre  9160057 mar  8 16:44 main-afd00abb2f3ced6bfdc03855d49d107bdd5e78b2bd1af601b3f90f0fead192a9.data
-rw-rw-r-- 1 andre andre   345518 mar  8 16:44 main-afd00abb2f3ced6bfdc03855d49d107bdd5e78b2bd1af601b3f90f0fead192a9.js
-rwxrwxr-x 1 andre andre 23414237 mar  8 16:44 main-afd00abb2f3ced6bfdc03855d49d107bdd5e78b2bd1af601b3f90f0fead192a9.wasm*
-rw-rw-r-- 1 andre andre     3804 mar  8 16:44 main-afd00abb2f3ced6bfdc03855d49d107bdd5e78b2bd1af601b3f90f0fead192a9.worker.js

[xyzz]

seems that fresh windows install flags it as a trojan :/


as a result it's impossible to install or run. for some reason that's not the case with recent actions e.g. https://github.com/vial-kb/vial-gui/actions/runs/13652942538

[edevil]

Seems like a known issue. pyinstaller/pyinstaller#5854

Oh well, I tried.

[xyzz]

from what i could gather searching online the possible ways forward are:

• pay for a code signing certificate
• use a different (older) pyinstaller version in hopes that the bootloader is allowlisted by ms defender (however, from checking virustotal the bootloader itself doesn't hit as many detections as vial.exe for some reason)
• compile our own pyinstaller bootloader and maybe if it's sufficiently different it won't be flagged (but this doesn't entirely make sense to me based off prior allowlist discussion)
• submit updated vial.exe to ms every time we build a release so that defender allowlists it specifically

[edevil]

There's also Nuitka.

[LukeDRussell]

It runs OK on my Windows PC, two weeks later. I'm running up to date Windows 11 Pro 24H2 with build 26100.3476.

[kbladewht]

this change looks good for me

[xyzz]

after checking a lot of combinations, it seems to be OK for Python 3.11 with Pyinstaller 5.13.2 in https://github.com/vial-kb/vial-gui/tree/pyinstaller-2025-08-18, however there are still issues such as there is no app icon on windows anymore

[JkktBkkt]

using python 3.14 ran into
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement pyinstaller==6.12.0 (from versions: 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, 3.1, 3.1.1, 3.2, 3.2.1, 3.3, 3.3.1, 3.4, 3.5, 3.6, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 4.5.1, 6.15.0, 6.16.0, 6.17.0, 6.18.0, 6.19.0)
solved by using 3.11 instead