Getting Started on Windows

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

Requirements

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

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

  • sphinx package for the documentation (optional).

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

libclang can be downloaded from the Qt servers. for example, libclang-release_130-based-windows-vs2019_64.7z.

Note that from version 12 onwards, the prebuilt Windows binaries from LLVM no longer contain CMake configuration files; so they can no longer be used.

Extract the files, and leave it on any desired path, for example, c:, and then set these two required environment variables:

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

Getting PySide

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, for example, 6.0:

cd pyside-setup && git checkout 6.0

Note

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

Building PySide

Check your Qt installation path, to specifically use that version of qtpaths to build PySide. for example, E:\Qt\6.0.0\msvc2019_64\bin\qtpaths.exe.

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

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

Installing PySide

To install on the current directory, just run:

python setup.py install --qtpaths=c:\path\to\qtpaths.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 PySide:

python examples/widgets/widgets/tetrix.py