Distributing Python GUI applications to end users is a challenge: will they need to install Python? If so, which version? If not, how do they install the application? From a random ZIP file? How native does the process feel? Will their system trust your code? For a fluid experience, it needs to be signed and (on macOS) notarized beforehand.

Welcome to pup, the tool that the Mu Editor development team has created to package and distribute it in platform-native formats to Windows and macOS users around the world.

In this session I will show how pup can be used to package GUI Applications for distribution: natively on Windows and macOS, and in early stages of development for distribution-agnostic Linux artifacts. In short, if it's pip-installable it is pup-packageable!

I will then describe the way pup works (and how it differs from comparable tools) leading on to a call-for-action moment, where I'll share its current state of development, what's good, what's bad, and where I'd like it to be headed to.

I'll wrap up the talk with a set of future-looking thoughts that pup has helped identify not only on the specifics of CPython's distribution, but also on the Python ecosystem as whole.