Flame 2018: Incomplete PySide deployment?

[systems]

In the directory /usr/discreet/lib64/2018/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PySide, why are the following two files missing?

• QtHelp.so
• QtUiTools.so

[Beau_James]

Those can be found in the following location:

• /opt/Shotgun/Python/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PySide
  • /opt/Shotgun/Python/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PySide/QtUiTools.so
  • /opt/Shotgun/Python/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PySide/QtHelp.so

Here are all the Qt files in that path:

• ls /opt/Shotgun/Python/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PySide | grep Qt ◦ QtCore.so
  ◦ QtDeclarative.so
  ◦ QtGui.so
  ◦ QtHelp.so
  ◦ QtMultimedia.so
  ◦ QtNetwork.so
  ◦ QtOpenGL.so
  ◦ QtScript.so
  ◦ QtSql.so
  ◦ QtSvg.so
  ◦ QtTest.so
  ◦ QtUiTools.so
  ◦ QtWebKit.so
  ◦ QtXmlPatterns.so
  ◦ QtXml.so

After a fresh install of 2018, I also see QTHelp.so located here:

• /usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/PyQt4/QtHelp.so

[fred.warren]

Hello sytems,

May I ask why do you need those?

thanks

fred

[systems]

We are interested in running our own Python / PySide GUI code from a Flame Python callback. For instance, looking at the hooks in exportHook.py, after an image sequence has been exported we might want to popup a GUI which would ask the artist for some additional information not found in Flame before running a facility-specific "publish" command.

The problem is that you can't really mix Python / PySide versions inside the same address space, and the version included with the Shotgun installation is not the same as the version included with Flame. Even Python itself is different: the one included with Flame 2018 is 2.7.3, the one included with the latest Shotgun Desktop is 2.7.6. And if you start mixing bits and pieces from both distributions, Very Bad Things are likely to happen.

We currently have Python GUI code that references QtUiTools.so, the fact that it is missing from the Flame installation / binary environment means we cannot use this code as is and have to work around this missing library.

So even though Flame itself might not use it, it would be very helpful to pipeline developers looking to integrate in-house pipeline code into Flame if a complete PySide distribution was included, not just the bits that Flame needs for itself.

I would suggest that Flame should start adhering to the VFX Reference Platform http://www.vfxplatform.com/ , as Maya on Linux already does. This is very helpful for facilities trying to have a coherent software development environment across their major applications.

Thanks!

JF