Prerequisites

You will need:

a compiler with C++14 support (C++17 for Qt6 builds)
Python3.7 or higher
Qt5 version 5.12 or higher
Qt6 version 6.2 or higher
QtForPython provided by the Qt project.

Install PySide2 for Qt5

Make sure you have PySide2, shiboken2 and shiboken2-generator installed. As this time, you cannot get shiboken2-generator because the wheels are not on PyPi. To use the wheels do this:

% python3 -m pip install \
    --index-url=http://download.qt.io/official_releases/QtForPython/ \
    --trusted-host download.qt.io \
    shiboken2 pyside2 shiboken2_generator

For more info visit https://doc.qt.io/qtforpython/shiboken2/gettingstarted.html

afterwards run:

python3 -m pip list | grep PySide

Note the version must match the same Qt you intend to use when building KDDockWidgets.

Install PySide6 for Qt6

Follow the same instructions as the previous section, except installing shiboken6 pyside6 shiboken6_generator with pip.

Building KDDockWidgets Python Bindings

Tell CMake to build the bindings by passing the ‘-DKDDockWidgets_PYTHON_BINDINGS=True’ option. Then run cmake --build as usual.

The bindings will be installed to CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX, which might require setting the PYTHONPATH env variable to point to that path when running applications.

For example, if you install to the default location on linux you would:

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/KDAB/KDDockWidgets-1.7.0/lib64/python3.10/site-packages

Alternatively, configure the bindings install location by passing (for example) -DKDDockWidgets_PYTHON_BINDINGS_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages to CMake and adjust to the PYTHONPATH accordingly, as necessary.

To run the KDDW python example

export PYTHONPATH=/usr/local/KDAB/KDDockWidgets-1.7.0/lib64/python3.10/site-packages # adapt as needed
cd python/examples/
rcc -g python -o rc_assets.py ../../examples/dockwidgets/resources_example.qrc
python3 main.py

Build Issues

You can override the default Python3 version found by CMake (usually the newest version available) by passing the Python3_EXECUTABLE value to CMake, i.e.

cmake -DPython3_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/python3.10 ....

If you see errors like "Unable to locate Clang's built-in include directory" then first make sure you have llvm installed. If you still have problems try setting the environment variable LLVM_INSTALL_DIR to point to your llvm installation.

Examples:

export LLVM_INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/opt/llvm-11

set "LLVM_INSTALL_DIR=C:\Program Files\LLVM" #Windows

When building the examples you may encounter errors loading shared libraries from shiboken2_generator.

Try:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/python/dist-packages/PySide2/Qt/lib #linux
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib/python/dist-packages/PySide2/Qt/lib #Mac
(Adjust to wherever your PySide is installed)

On Windows the libclang.dll that ship with QtForPython is not compatible with MSVC2019. To fix this, copy the libclang.dll that comes with llvm into shiboken2, like so:

cd C:\Python37\Lib\site-packages\shiboken2_generator
copy libclang.dll libclang.dll.save
copy "C:\Program Files\llvm\bin\libclang.dll" libclang.dll
(Python3 installation in C:\Python37 and llvm in c:\Program Files\llvm. adjust as needed)

On macOS if you see cstdlib:145:9: error: no member named quick_exit in the global namespace with XCode 15, try making the SDKROOT env variable point to the XCode 14.2 SDK or download a more recent PySide6.