No module named 'fcntl', while attempting to install Pyinstaller

Question

I wanted to install Pyinstaller to distribute a python script of mine, without needing to share the source code. From what I've seen online, fcntl is a Linux library, which is rather strange, since Pyinstaller is used to make .exe files, which are run on Windows. The following is the error I got while using pip install pyinstaller.

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'fcntl'
  [end of output]

  note: This error originates from a subprocess, and is likely not a problem with pip.
error: metadata-generation-failed

Encountered error while generating package metadata.

See above for output.

note: This is an issue with the package mentioned above, not pip.
hint: See above for details.

Note: I haven't included the complete error. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The fcntl module is not available on Windows. The functionality it exposes does not exist on that platform.

You can use an alternative like portalocker module. After some research, I found out that the substitute of fcntl on windows are win32api calls.