macOS

Requirements

  • Xcode 8.2 (macOS 10.11), 8.3.3 (macOS 10.12), 9 (macOS 10.13), 10.1 (macOS 10.14)

  • sphinx package for the documentation (optional).

  • Depending on your OS, the following dependencies might also be required:

    • libgl-dev, python-dev, and python-setuptools.

  • Check the platform dependencies of Qt for macOS.

Building from source

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  # your interpreter could be called 'python3'
source testenv/bin/activate

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

Alternatively, you can use the uv tool, which is popular in the Python community for Python project management. The following command creates a virtual environment using uv:

uv venv --python <python-version> testenv
source testenv/bin/activate

Note

Since the Qt for Python project still uses setup.py and not pyproject.toml, currently uv can only be used as a replacement for pyenv for building Qt for Python. If you have already the .python-version file (used by pyenv) in the project, make sure to change the version to the uv Python you want to use.

Setting up CLANG

If you don’t have libclang already in your system, you can download from the Qt servers:

wget https://download.qt.io/development_releases/prebuilt/libclang/libclang-release_18.1.5-based-macos-universal.7z

Extract the files, and leave it in any desired path, and set the environment variable required:

7z x libclang-release_18.1.5-based-macos-universal.7z
export LLVM_INSTALL_DIR=$PWD/libclang

Getting PySide

Cloning the official repository can be done by:

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

Checking out the version that we want to build, for example, 6.8:

cd pyside-setup && git checkout 6.8

Install the general dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

For building the documentation:

pip install -r requirements-doc.txt

Note

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

Note

With uv, use `uv pip install …

Building PySide

Check your Qt installation path, to specifically use that version of qtpaths to build PySide. for example, /opt/Qt/6.8.0/gcc_64/bin/qtpaths.

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

python setup.py build --qtpaths=/opt/Qt/6.8.0/gcc_64/bin/qtpaths --build-tests --ignore-git --parallel=8

With uv, this command becomes:

uv run setup.py build --qtpaths=/opt/Qt/6.8.0/gcc_64/bin/qtpaths --build-tests --ignore-git --parallel=8

Installing PySide

First, create the wheels using the create_wheels.py script:

python create_wheels.py --build-dir=/directory/where/pyside/is/built --no-examples

On successful completion, the wheels will be created in the dist directory.

Note

The build-dir typically looks like build/<your_python_environment_name>. The requirement is that this build-dir should contain the packages_for_wheel directory. If the python setup.py build command was successful, this directory should be present.

Finally, to install the wheels, use the following command:

pip install dist/*.whl

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/tetrix.py