How to install PySide v0.3.1 on Mac OS X?

Question

I'm trying to install PySide v0.3.1 in Mac OS X, for Qt development in python.

As a pre-requisite, I have installed CMake and the Qt SDK.

I have gone through the documentation and come up with the following installation script:

export PYSIDE_BASE_DIR="<my_dir>"

export APIEXTRACTOR_DIR="$PYSIDE_BASE_DIR/apiextractor-0.5.1"
export GENERATORRUNNER_DIR="$PYSIDE_BASE_DIR/generatorrunner-0.4.2"
export SHIBOKEN_DIR="$PYSIDE_BASE_DIR/shiboken-0.3.1"
export PYSIDE_DIR="$PYSIDE_BASE_DIR/pyside-qt4.6+0.3.1"
export PYSIDE_TOOLS_DIR="$PYSIDE_BASE_DIR/pyside-tools-0.1.3"

pushd .

cd $APIEXTRACTOR_DIR
cmake . 

cd $GENERATORRUNNER_DIR
cmake -DApiExtractor_DIR=$APIEXTRACTOR_DIR .

cd $SHIBOKEN_DIR
cmake -DApiExtractor_DIR=$APIEXTRACTOR_DIR -DGeneratorRunner_DIR=$GENERATORRUNNER_DIR .

cd $PYSIDE_DIR
cmake -DShiboken_DIR=$SHIBOKEN_DIR/libshiboken -DGENERATOR=$GENERATORRUNNER_DIR .

cd $PYSIDE_TOOLS_DIR
cmake .

popd

Now, I don't know if this installation script is ok, but apparently everything works fine. Each component (apiextractor, generatorrunner, shiboken, pyside-qt and pyside-tools) gets compiled into its own directory.

The problem is that I don't quite understand how PySide gets into the system's python environment. In fact, when I start a python shell, I cannot import PySide:

>>> import PySide
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
ImportError: No module named PySide

Note: I am aware of the Installing PySide - OSX question, but that question is not relevant anymore, because it is about a specific a dependency on the Boost libraries, but with version 0.3.0 PySide moved from a Boost based source code to a CPython one.

Answer 1

I don't have any MacOS experience but assuming it's similar to any *nix, let's go:

About the script: Isn't it missing some "make, make install" commands? The version you posted just run cmake to configure the build. Also for testing, I set -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX= for all modules. That way everything is installed in the same place and CMake takes care of finding them for me, as long as I used the same install prefix for each one. The directory layout in your script is quite complicated and mixes build and source directories.

About finding PySide: once everything is properly compiled and installed, the directory where the "PySide" directory was installed must be available in the PYTHONPATH variable. In the example below,

Here's a simple version of a build script(works on Ubuntu):

#!/bin/bash

BUILD_ROOT=/tmp/pyside-build
INSTALL_PREFIX=/tmp/sandbox

function build_module {
    cd $BUILD_ROOT
    echo Cloning project $1 from url $2
    git clone --depth 1 $2 $BUILD_ROOT/$1

    BUILD_DIR=$BUILD_ROOT/$1/build
    mkdir -p $BUILD_DIR
    cd $BUILD_DIR

    echo Configuring $1 build.
    cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=$INSTALL_PREFIX ..

    echo Configured $1. Starting build.
    make LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$INSTALL_PREFIX/lib

    echo Built $1. Installing.
    make install
    echo Successfully built and installed $1
}

rm -rf $BUILD_ROOT
mkdir -p $BUILD_ROOT
build_module apiextractor git://gitorious.org/pyside/apiextractor.git
build_module generatorrunner git://gitorious.org/pyside/generatorrunner.git
build_module shiboken git://gitorious.org/pyside/shiboken.git
build_module pyside-shiboken git://gitorious.org/pyside/pyside-shiboken.git

Run it and wait a while (Qt is quite big). :)

This script will download all packages into /tmp/pyside-build, build each one in its own "build" directory and install everything into /tmp/sandbox. Then, I just had to set PYTHONPATH to /tmp/sandbox/lib/python2.6/site-packages and PySide worked fine.

Answer 2

In answer to the original post...

What your script would have done is generate the necessary build files to build the pyside bindings, but it wouldn't have done the build itself. To do the build itself you'd need to execute a 'make', then a 'make install' in each of the build directories.

---

I've gotten most of the way through getting pyside 0.3.1 up and running on the Mac (SnowLeopard 10.6.3), but am hung up on the final compile step. My script is a bit less straightforward than yours, but in essence similar.

I have run into and worked around a number of problems to get to the final compile, and am hoping that I can help some folks along with the solutions/workarounds I've devised. Also, maybe collectively we can figure out how to get through the final step.

I'm going to include the build script that I'm using, and the log of the changes I had to make in the distro to get it running. But first, the step that I'm stuck on... mainly, I don't understand the error message, and the requested file doesn't seem to exist...

I hope this will help move support for the mac along...

I can't post this directly on stack overflow since its too long, so here is the link to the post on the mailing list over at pyside.

http://lists.openbossa.org/pipermail/pyside/2010-June/000812.html