Error when using pyinstaller: UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff

Question

I have an issue when i compile a PyQt code with pyinstaller.

I use this line to compile:

c:\Anaconda3\Scripts\pyinstaller.exe -y -F --distpath="." MyQt.py

then I get this error message:

      File "c:\anaconda36bis\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\hooks\hook-zmq.py", line
18, in <module>
    hiddenimports.extend(collect_submodules('zmq.backend'))
  File "c:\anaconda36bis\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\utils\hooks\__init__.py",
 line 619, in collect_submodules
    repr(pkg_dir), package))
  File "c:\anaconda36bis\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\utils\hooks\__init__.py",
 line 90, in exec_statement
    return __exec_python_cmd(cmd)
  File "c:\anaconda36bis\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\utils\hooks\__init__.py",
 line 77, in __exec_python_cmd
    txt = exec_python(*cmd, env=pp_env)
  File "c:\anaconda36bis\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\compat.py", line 562, in
exec_python
    return exec_command(*cmdargs, **kwargs)
  File "c:\anaconda36bis\lib\site-packages\PyInstaller\compat.py", line 369, in
exec_command
    out = out.decode(encoding)
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xff in position 152: invali
d start byte

The error message is not clear to me and I don't understand why this happens.

Is it possible that pyinstaller try to use a module which is not compatible? I use these in my script:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
from __future__ import absolute_import
from __future__ import division
from __future__ import print_function
from __future__ import unicode_literals
# from PyQt5.QtGui import *
from PyQt5.QtCore import *
from PyQt5.QtWidgets import * 
import sys
import numpy as np
import matplotlib
matplotlib.use('Qt5Agg')
from matplotlib.figure import Figure
from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt5agg import FigureCanvasQTAgg as     FigureCanvas
from matplotlib.backends.backend_qt5agg import NavigationToolbar2QT as     NavigationToolbar
from scipy.ndimage import imread
from scipy.ndimage.morphology import binary_dilation
from scipy.optimize import curve_fit, leastsq

update

the issue printed in the console come directly after

142859 INFO: Loading module hook "hook-zmq.py"...

So it should mean that the error is coming from zmq?

Answer 1

I found an answer on another forum. I change the line number 369 in the Python\Lib\site-packages\Pyinstaller\compat.py file:

out = out.decode(encoding)

to

out = out.decode(encoding, errors='ignore')

or

out = out.decode(encoding, "replace")

Now I can compile my script without any issue. I still don't know why my issue happened in the first place but at least that compiles now.

Answer 2

The answer still works 2 years later BUT the line changed from 368 to 428.

Answer 3

In the newest version (3.5) , the line moved slightly to 427.

The best thing to do is to search for

out = out.decode(encoding)

and replace it with

out = out.decode(encoding, "replace")

I don't understand why they do not fix this annoying problem!