Setting up PySide/Qt for GUI development

Question

I have been trying to setup PySide/Qt for use with Python3.3. I have installed

PySide-1.2.0.win32-py3.3.exe 

that I took from here and I have installed

qt-win-opensource-4.8.5-vs2010

that I took from here.

I generated .py files from .ui files (that I made using QtDesigner) using pyside-uic.exe as is explained in PySide Wiki.

Making .py files was working when I was using Qt5.1/QtCreator. I stopped using it when I found that I need to use Qt4.8 as explained on Qt-forums. With Qt4.8 it isn't working.

• I want to develop GUI using PySide.
• I want a drag-and-drop interface for making a skeleton GUI so I am using QtDesigner.
• I am on Windows 7

I want to package the GUI developed into .exe files using cx-freeze.

My problem in short
What are the correct tools to use to make .ui with QtDesigner? How to convert them to .py files for use in Python using PySide?

cx_freeze is able to make my normal files to .exe Can it be used to convert the GUI made by Qt/PySide into .exe files? Would Qt be needed on other computers where the .exe of the GUI is distributed or would it be self-contained?

---

I used

cxfreeze testGUI.py  --include-modules=PySide

to make the exe and related files. A directory dist was created with many files. On running nothing happened. So I used command line to find out the reason. The errors are

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\cx_Freeze\initscripts\Console3.py", line 27, in <module>
    exec(code, m.__dict__)
  File "testGUI.py", line 12, in <module>
  File "C:\Python\32-bit\3.3\lib\importlib\_bootstrap.py", line 1558, in _find_and_load
  File "C:\Python\32-bit\3.3\lib\importlib\_bootstrap.py", line 1525, in _find_and_load_unlocked
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\PySide\__init__.py", line 55, in <module>
    _setupQtDirectories()
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\PySide\__init__.py", line 11, in _setupQtDirectories
    pysideDir = _utils.get_pyside_dir()
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\PySide\_utils.py", line 87, in get_pyside_dir
    return _get_win32_case_sensitive_name(os.path.abspath(os.path.dirname(__file__)))
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\PySide\_utils.py", line 83, in _get_win32_case_sensitive_name
    path = _get_win32_long_name(_get_win32_short_name(s))
  File "C:\Python33\lib\site-packages\PySide\_utils.py", line 58, in _get_win32_short_name
    raise WinError()
FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified.

Anyone knows what this stacktrace means?

There is a lot of win32 in here. But I have Windows 7 64-bit. I am using 32-bit Python and all modules were installed 32-bit. Could that cause a problem? I don't think it should as other exe I made for simple Python scripts were executing fine.

Answer 1

PySide 1.2.1 was released. It has fixed the error. I checked it by installing the new version and using cx_freeze.

No error in packaging with cx_freeze 4.3.1(32-bit version for Python 3.3) used with Python 3.3.2(32-bit) and PySide 1.2.1(32-bit) on Windows 7(64-Bit). I used the command written in the question to package it. It worked successfully.

Answer 2

Regarded FileNotFoundError, I had a problem packaging a python 3 application with this for a few days. On a windows 7 64 bit machine it worked fine. When I built it on win7 32bit and tried to run the .exe file, I got all those file errors. After seeing this thread I checked the versions of pyside. On the win64 it was 1.1.2 on the win32 it was 1.2.0 I uninstalled pyside 1.2.0 on win32 and downloaded and installed the 1.1.2 win32 version. It now works ok. This could be a stop gap measure until 1.2.1 is released.

Answer 3

I'm doing something similar (however I'm in the progress of migrating from PyQt to PySide).

You should use pyside-uic to generate the code for the GUI after creating the UI files in QtCreator (If this were PyQt "pyuic gui.ui > gui.py" would produce the desired code, I assume pyside-uic has a similar behaviour). I then subclass this generated code to customise the user interface.

Yes, you can use cx_freeze with PyQt/PySide, you'll want to include PySide in the "includes" item in the build options.

Yes, you can create a completely self-contained executable - you won't need Python, Qt or anything else.

Here's the build I use from my PySide GUI application.

__author__ = 'AlexM'
import sys
from cx_Freeze import setup, Executable
import MyPySideGui
import PySide, os

base = None
if sys.platform == "win32":
    base = "Win32GUI"

QGifRelDir = "imageformats\qgif4.dll"
PySideDir = (os.path.join(os.path.dirname(PySide.__file__),"plugins"))

shortcut_table = [
    ("App Shortcut",                 # Shortcut
     "ProgramMenuFolder",            # Directory_
     "MyPySideGUI",                  # Name
     "TARGETDIR",                    # Component_
     "[TARGETDIR]MyPySideApp.exe",   # Target
     None,                           # Arguments
     None,                           # Description
     None,                           # Hotkey
     None,                           # Icon
     None,                           # IconIndex
     None,                           # ShowCmd
     'TARGETDIR'                     # WkDir
     )
]

build_exe_options = {
    "include_files" : ["documentTemplate.html", "loading.gif", (os.path.join(PySideDir,QGifRelDir), QGifRelDir)],
    "packages" : ["CustomHelperPackage", "AnotherCustomPackage", "MyPySideGui"],
    "includes" : ["PySide"],
    "excludes" : ["tkinter"],
    'optimize': 2,
}

# Now create the table dictionary
msi_data = {"Shortcut": shortcut_table}

# Change some default MSI options and specify the use of the above defined tables
bdist_msi_options = {'data': msi_data}

executables = [ Executable("MyPySideGui.py", base = base) ]

setup(
    name = "MyFirstPySideApplication",
    version = str(MyPySideGui.version),
    description = "MyPySideApp.exe Demonstrates PySide guis.",
    options = {
        "build_exe": build_exe_options,
        "bdist_msi": bdist_msi_options
    },
    executables = executables
)

This example might be slightly complicated for you, but you can find simpler examples on the cx_freeze project homepage.

I'm not getting the issues you or the other answer are getting, but then I'm using Python 3.3.1 with PySide 1.1.2.

Answer 4

This error:

FileNotFoundError: [WinError 3] The system cannot find the path specified.

will be fixed in next pyside release (1.2.1). It will be released in next week.

btw: in case you don't want to generate custom bindings, you don't need to install qt, pyside installer contains all qt libraries and devel tools.