auto install dependencies

[damies13]

Hi,
I'm looking at using pywebview for my app to replace the existing tkinter UI, but there's a major stumbling block currently, and I want to know if it can be easily solved or I should look at other options?

The issue is packaging and dependencies, I don't want to ask my users to go install the various dependencies in order to use my application but as I understand it from the pywebview installation page there are various dependencies that would need to be installed for each platform.

1. First question: is why pip install pywebview does not install these dependencies as required, this would be the best solution.
2. Next question: is it possible to have a python package that is installed with pip, install these dependencies as required? Some thing I can add to my project that will do this for my users.

[gistrec]

pip install pywebview can only install Python-level dependencies from PyPI. Some pywebview backends depend on native system components: for example GTK/WebKitGTK on Linux, WebView2 on Windows, or Qt/QtWebEngine depending on the backend

Those are not ordinary Python packages. They are normally installed through the OS/vendor package manager or runtime installer (apt, dnf, brew, MSI/WebView2 installer, etc.), and may require elevated privileges

So I would not try to solve this by making another PyPI package that runs apt install, installs WebView2, or modifies the system during pip install. That is not portable, is hard to make reliable, and is generally a bad fit for Python packaging

For end users, the usual solution is to stop treating pip as the distribution mechanism and ship an application bundle/installer instead:

• PyInstaller: pywebview documents this path for Windows/Linux.
• Nuitka: also mentioned in the pywebview freezing docs.
• Briefcase: useful if you want native-style app packaging/installers.

If you still want a pip install flow, I would treat it as a developer/technical-user install and document the platform-specific prerequisites, for example:

# Ubuntu / GTK backend
sudo apt install python3-gi python3-gi-cairo gir1.2-gtk-3.0 gir1.2-webkit2-4.1
pip install pywebview[gtk]

For non-technical end users, an installer or bundled app is the better path

[damies13]

Thanks for your reply, I have to consider my existing user base who are already used to installing from pip.

My user base is what I would call semi-technical, they are software testers, who are used to installing python packages through pip and in their work places will have access to do so already for the other related tools, they may not have administrator access to their machines to install OS components though.

At the moment with tkinter they don't need to install any OS components except python (and tkinter as part of the python install), and I would like to keep it as close to that experience as possible.

It seems by this answer pywebview is not the right answer for me, I will continue looking for another solution.

Thanks for you help 👍

[r0x0r]

@damies13 what platform are you targeting?

[damies13]

The 3 major ones, Windows, MacOS and Linux.

By looking at my pypi downloads Windows and MacOS have about the same number of downloads, Linux is by far the highest, but this might be because some people integrate my tool into a CI/CD pipeline and those users would not be using the GUI.

As with most open source software I don't know exactly how most people are using it, I just get bits of information from support issues, but I think the GUI vs No-GUI users is about 50/50. so I expect the Linux GUI users would be about the same as MacOS (but that's a guess)

[r0x0r]

Linux is a vast heterogenous ecosystem with each distribution may or may not have required dependencies. I believe on some systems it may enough to pip install pywebview[qt] or pip install pywebview[gtk], while others require installing external dependencies. Install script is probably a correct answer to this problem.
On macOS and modern Windows 11 pip install is enough. On older Windows you need to install a webview2 runtime if it is not installed alredady.

[damies13]

I will play with it a bit on various setups and see what the experience is like before making any decision, thanks, this was helpful