PythonQt

PythonQt is a dynamic Python binding for Qt. It offers an easy way to embed the Python scripting language into your Qt applications.

Documentation

API documentation is available at: https://mevislab.github.io/pythonqt

Licensing

PythonQt is distributed under the LGPL 2.1 license.

Licensing of Generator

The build system of PythonQt makes use of a patched version of the LGPL'ed QtScript generator, located in the generator directory.

See the LICENSE.LGPL file in the generator subdirectory for details. Copyright (C) 2009 Nokia Corporation and/or its subsidiary(-ies)

See https://code.qt.io/cgit/qt-labs/qtscriptgenerator.git for the original project. The PythonQt wrappers generated by the generator are distributed under the LGPL as well.

The integrated preprocessor has been replaced with code from the simplecpp project, see https://github.com/danmar/simplecpp. It is licensed under the 0BSDL license, see the LICENSE file in the generator/simplecpp directory. Copyright (C) 2016-2023 simplecpp team

The generated wrappers are pre-generated and checked-in, so you only need to build and run the generator when you want to build additional wrappers or you want to upgrade/downgrade to another Qt version, but this requires updating the typesystems as well.

Building

General

Building PythonQt requires a couple of steps. Follow these instructions in order to get a correctly built PythonQt runtime and Qt bindings.

Recommendations

It is recommended to build the Qt bindings yourself instead of using the pregenerated ones. This ensures the bindings are compatible with your Qt version. Do not build PythonQt.pro directly because it will only use the pregenerated bindings!

Environment

First, you need to set a couple of environment variables, which depend on your Python and Qt installation.

• PYTHON_VERSION

  Set the version of your Python interpreter. The syntax is <major>.<minor>, e.g., 3.10.

• PYTHON_PATH

  This is the absolute path to the root directory of your Python installation.

• PYTHON_LIB

  The absolute path to the libs directory in your python installation $PYTHON_PATH/libs.

• PYTHON_DIR

  The PYTHON_DIR is required for non-Windows installations to find the python-config executable. This should have the same value as PYTHON_PATH.

• QTDIR

  The absolute path to the root directory of your Qt installation.

Binding Generator

1. cd into the generator directory

2. Run qmake on generator.pro

   qmake CONFIG+=Release generator.pro

3. Make the generator

   Use nmake for MSVC (Visual Studio; make sure to have the environment variables set for Visual Studio beforehand). Otherwise, use make.

4. Generate the bindings

   We use the generator executable from step 3 to generate the bindings. The location of the generator executable can vary depending on your platform (the subdirectory is named after the current configuration, e.g., release). On Windows, the generator is named pythonqt_generator.exe; on all other platforms, it is named pythonqt_generator.

   <generator-executable> qtscript_masterinclude.h build_all.txt

PythonQt Runtime

Next, we need the PythonQt runtime.

1. cd into the src directory

2. qmake src.pro

   qmake CONFIG+=Release src.pro

3. Make the runtime

   Use nmake for MSVC (Visual Studio; make sure to have the environment variables set for Visual Studio beforehand). Otherwise, use make.

Extensions

As a last step, we need to build the extensions.

1. cd into extensions

2. qmake extensions.pro

   qmake CONFIG+=Release extensions.pro

3. Make the extensions

   Use nmake for MSVC (Visual Studio; make sure to have the environment variables set for Visual Studio beforehand). Otherwise, use make.

After all these steps, you should now have a fully working PythonQt runtime and Qt bindings for your Python/Qt installation 🎉.

MinGW

It is possible to build PythonQt with MinGW on Windows instead of using MSVC.