Getting Started on Windows

The Qt library has to be built with the same version of MSVC as Python and PySide2, this can be selected when using the online installer.

Requirements

  • Qt package from here or a custom build of Qt 5.12+ (preferably Qt 5.15)

  • A Python interpreter (version Python 3.5+). Preferably get it from the official website.

  • MSVC2017 (or MSVC2019) for Python 3 on Windows,

  • CMake version 3.1 or greater

  • Git version 2 or greater

  • libclang prebuilt version from the Qt Downloads page is recommended. We recommend libclang10 for PySide 5.15.

  • OpenSSL (optional for SSL support, Qt must have been configured using the same SSL library).

  • venv or virtualenv is strongly recommended, but optional.

  • sphinx package for the documentation (optional).

Note

Python 2.7 interpreter is not supported. The official Python 2.7 binary package offerred on the official website is built using MSVC 2007, while the Qt libraries are built using MSVC 2015/2017. If you intend to use Python 2.7, build the interpreter yourself with MSVC 2015 or later, and build Qt for Python with it.

Note

Python 3.8.0 was missing some API required for PySide/Shiboken so it’s not possible to use it for a Windows build.

Building from source on Windows 10

Creating a virtual environment

The venv module allows you to create a local, user-writeable copy of a python environment into which arbitrary modules can be installed and which can be removed after use:

python -m venv testenv
call testenv\Scripts\activate
pip install -r requirements.txt  # General dependencies, documentation, and examples.

will create and use a new virtual environment, which is indicated by the command prompt changing.

Setting up CLANG

If you don’t have libclang already in your system, you can download from the Qt servers, e.g. libclang-release_100-based-windows-vs2019_64.7z.

Extract the files, and leave it on any desired path, for example, c:, and set the environment variable required:

set LLVM_INSTALL_DIR=c:\libclang
set PATH=C:\libclang\bin;%PATH%

Getting PySide2

Cloning the official repository can be done by:

git clone --recursive https://code.qt.io/pyside/pyside-setup

Checking out the version that we want to build, e.g. 5.15:

cd pyside-setup && git checkout 5.15

Note

Keep in mind you need to use the same version as your Qt installation

Building PySide2

Check your Qt installation path, to specifically use that version of qmake to build PySide2. e.g. E:\Qt\5.15.0\msvc2019_64\bin\qmake.exe.

Build can take a few minutes, so it is recommended to use more than one CPU core:

python setup.py build --qmake=c:\path\to\qmake.exe --openssl=c:\path\to\openssl\bin --build-tests --ignore-git --parallel=8

Installing PySide2

To install on the current directory, just run:

python setup.py install --qmake=c:\path\to\qmake.exe  --openssl=c:\path\to\openssl\bin --build-tests --ignore-git --parallel=8

Test installation

You can execute one of the examples to verify the process is properly working. Remember to properly set the environment variables for Qt and PySide2:

python examples/widgets/widgets/tetrix.py