ok-pyside-minimal

An unofficial, smaller redistribution of the official PySide6-Essentials wheels for Qt Widgets applications. Native binaries are retained unchanged; this project removes files and rewrites package metadata. It does not rebuild Qt.

python -m pip install ok-pyside-minimal

Imports keep their normal names:

from PySide6.QtWidgets import QApplication, QLabel

app = QApplication([])
label = QLabel("Hello from Qt Widgets")
label.show()
app.exec()

Use a clean environment. This distribution owns the PySide6 namespace: do not install it alongside PySide6, PySide6-Essentials, or PySide6-Addons. It does not satisfy another package's declared dependency on PySide6-Essentials; that dependency must be changed by the consuming project. The only Python dependency is shiboken6, pinned to the exact upstream version. No Addons, PySide6 metapackage, PDF, WebEngine, Shiboken generator, NumPy or setuptools is required at runtime. requirements-dev.txt is only for building and testing this repository.

Contents

OpenGL removal means removing the separate Qt OpenGL modules, their plugins, and the bundled Windows software OpenGL renderer. QtGui itself is upstream's unchanged binary and still contains graphics APIs, including OpenGL interfaces, and may use system graphics libraries. A Qt build with OpenGL support disabled would require a separate source-build project.

Compile .ui and .qrc files in a separate development environment using official PySide6; ship the generated Python files with your application. Runtime QUiLoader is unavailable. Native dependency scans remove optional plugins that link to removed libraries and stop the build if a required runtime binary would break. QtGui's native DBus dependency on Linux/macOS and other upstream system libraries cannot be removed through file pruning.

Automatic releases

publish.yml checks PyPI every six hours and can also be run manually. Stable upstream releases from 6.12.0 onward are processed oldest first, one per run. All official platform wheels are included: currently Windows x64/ARM64, Linux x64/ARM64, and macOS universal2. A new unknown platform stops planning until a runner is configured. Prereleases are manual only; yanked releases are rejected.

Each release:

1. Downloads only official PyPI files and verifies their published SHA-256 digests.
2. Removes excluded bindings, libraries, tools, plugins and related assets.
3. Checks PE, ELF and Mach-O dependencies; rewrites module lists, entry points, wheel metadata and RECORD hashes.
4. Installs and tests each wheel on its native platform, including both macOS architectures, and runs twine check.
5. Publishes through GitHub Actions OIDC / PyPI Trusted Publishing, then creates a GitHub release with wheels and build reports.

Version numbers match upstream, except 6.12.0 is published as 6.12.0.post1 because its original PyPI release was deleted and PyPI does not permit reusing those filenames. Automatic discovery and local builds both apply this minimum revision. For a packaging correction, manually run the workflow with the upstream version and a positive revision. The Shiboken dependency and PySide6.__version__ remain at the upstream version. Retries build all artifacts and skip wheels already uploaded to PyPI, allowing partial uploads to recover. Scheduled workflows may be delayed by GitHub and may be disabled after 60 days of repository inactivity; re-enable them in Actions if needed.

One-time publishing setup

No PyPI API token is used. In the PyPI account that will own the project, register a pending trusted publisher:

Create the matching pypi environment in GitHub repository settings. Then run Publish to PyPI → Run workflow. The first successful OIDC publication creates the PyPI project. GitHub authentication authorizes the workflow, but PyPI still requires this account-side trust registration. See PyPI's instructions.

Local development

python -m venv .venv
# Activate .venv, then:
python -m pip install -r requirements-dev.txt
python -m pytest
python -m scripts.release plan
python -m scripts.release build --version 6.12.0
python -m twine check dist/*

build --filename OFFICIAL_WHEEL_NAME selects one wheel. Downloads are cached under .cache/; output wheels go to dist/ and reports to reports/. Install the matching wheel into a fresh environment, then run python -m scripts.smoke. No source distribution is produced: the deliverables are transformed platform wheels. The tooling deliberately has no setuptools build backend.

Licensing and source

Qt and PySide remain under their upstream licenses, not this repository's MIT tooling license. Original copyright notices and bundled license material are retained; copies of LGPLv3, GPLv2 and GPLv3 from the upstream PySide 6.12.0 source tree are included under licenses/ and added to every wheel. See NOTICE for attribution and source locations. Every wheel includes an upstream.json containing the exact original wheel URL, SHA-256, version, removed-file manifest, and corresponding source locations. This project is not affiliated with The Qt Company.