[Bug] requirements.txt includes Windows-only dependencies causing cross-platform install failures

[rajeshuchil]

Summary

The requirements.txt file currently includes Windows-specific and build-time dependencies:
pefile
pywin32-ctypes
pyinstaller
pyinstaller-hooks-contrib
altgraph

These packages are either Windows-only or intended for executable bundling (PyInstaller), not for runtime execution of the application.

Because of this, running
pip install -r requirements.txt

on Linux or macOS may fail or install unnecessary dependencies. This creates a poor contributor experience and contradicts the repository’s cross-platform support goals.

Expected behavior

pip install -r requirements.txt should succeed on all supported platforms (Windows, Linux, macOS) and install only the runtime dependencies required to run the application.

Packaging or build tools (such as pyinstaller) should be moved to development dependencies or guarded with platform markers.

Reproduction steps

Create a Python virtual environment

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate

Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

On Linux/macOS environments this may fail or install unnecessary Windows-specific packages.

Environment

Environment

OS: Ubuntu 22.04
Python: 3.10+
Branch: main

Logs or screenshots

No response

[SeaCelo]

@rajeshuchil Did you test that it does fail or is this just a concern ("may fail")?

[rajeshuchil]

@SeaCelo I tested this on Ubuntu with a fresh virtual environment and pip install -r requirements.txt completes successfully.

While checking the codebase, I couldn’t find any runtime imports of pefile, pywin32-ctypes, pyinstaller, pyinstaller-hooks-contrib, or altgraph. They seem to be used only for build/packaging (PyInstaller), not runtime.

So the concern is mainly that these are build-time dependencies and probably shouldn’t be in requirements.txt

[SeaCelo]

This is the right approach but is superseded by #133 and #104, which is now merged.