Investigate move to PySide2 from PyQt5

[kushaldas]

Motivation

PySide2 is the official Python binding for Qt from Qt company. They provide official support for the same. It also gets better updates. That is the primary reason for me to suggest the same.

Tasks

Two spikes should be conducted to investigate the feasibility of this task (~4h timeboxes for each), this can be done in either order:

• Ensure that PySide2 wheel can be built from source (can we use the existing logic in the packaging repository?):
  add more developer docs #1089 (comment)

• Update requirements/dev-requirements.txt to use PySide2, replacing the imports and ensuring the client is working as expected.

[kushaldas]

PySide2 is the official Python binding for Qt from Qt company. They provide official support for the same. It also gets better updates. That is the primary reason for me to suggest the same.

[emkll]

@kushaldas has investigated the first step (wheel build) in #1089 (comment) . It will require a special case to handle the build logic for these wheels, since sources tarballs for pyside are not available on PyPI and requires additional dependencies and configuration .

[eloquence]

(This is on the 1/21-2/3 sprint for additional investigation & discussion, as time permits given competing 1.7.0/Focal priorities.)

[eloquence]

@creviera has committed to time-boxed work (4 hours) to further investigate if she can successfully build Qt and pyside2 wheels, following the process described by Kushal in #1089 (comment)

To recap, the motivation here is twofold, as I understand it:

• being able to reliably build Qt and its Python bindings to aid in debugging investigations
• migrating to the official bindings, which may have maintainability benefits in future.

As we continue this investigation, we'll monitor whether we're indeed able to realize both of those benefits.

[sssoleileraaa]

I'll be coming back to this issue within the next couple of weeks to see if we're ready to get started on a migration plan from pyqt to pyside.

--

Update: we decided to prioritize other issues and removed this from the near term