Qt for Python & fbs

fbs provides a powerful environment for packaging, creating installers, and signing your application. It also lets you manage updates to your application. As it is based on PyInstaller, it supports Linux, macOS, and Windows.

You can read the official tutorial for more details on how to use fbs, or check the documentation for a complete set of features and options.

Preparation

Installing fbs (>= 0.7.6) can be done via pip:

pip install fbs

If you are using a virtual environment, remember to activate it before installing it.

After the installation, you will be able to use the fbs executable.

Starting a new project

fbs provides nice features that lets you create a base project structure by executing the following command:

fbs startproject

This command prompts you to answer a few questions to configure the details of your project, like:

  • Application name

  • Author name

  • Qt bindings (PySide2 or PyQt5)

  • Bundle indentified (for macOS)

After it finishes, you will have a src/ directory that contains the following structure:

└── src
    ├── build
    │   └── settings
    └── main
        ├── icons
        │   ├── base
        │   ├── linux
        │   └── mac
        └── python

Inside the settings directory, you will find a couple of json files that can be edited to include more information about your project.

The main file will be under the python directory, and its content by default is:

from fbs_runtime.application_context import ApplicationContext
from PySide2.QtWidgets import QMainWindow

import sys

if __name__ == '__main__':
    appctxt = ApplicationContext()       # 1. Instantiate ApplicationContext
    window = QMainWindow()
    window.resize(250, 150)
    window.show()
    exit_code = appctxt.app.exec_()      # 2. Invoke appctxt.app.exec_()
    sys.exit(exit_code)

This example shows an empty QMainWindow. You can run it using the following command:

fbs run

Freezing the application

Once you verify that the application is properly working, you can continue with the freezing process using the following command:

fbs freeze

After the process finishes, you will get a message stating the location of your executable. For example:

Done. You can now run `target/MyApp/MyApp`. If that doesn't work, see
https://build-system.fman.io/troubleshooting.

You can now try running the application, which will result in the same window that you saw with the fbs run command:

cd target/MyApp/
./MyApp

Note

This is the case for Linux. For other platforms like macOS, you need to enter the directory: target/MyApp.app/Contents/macOS, and for Windows find the MyApp.exe executable.