Journals of Accelerator Conferences Website (JACoW)
JACoW
is a publisher in Geneva, Switzerland that publishes the
proceedings of accelerator conferences held around the world
by an international collaboration of editors.
| URL | https://doi.org/10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2025-THPD078 |
|---|---|
| Title | Preparing the migration of Python GUIs from Qt5 to Qt6 at CERN |
| Authors |
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| Abstract | The use of Python in CERN's particle accelerator domain has grown steadily over the last decade. For non-software developers, it integrates well into the reality of a physics laboratory, where people who develop hardware or design operational workflows often author associated software, including Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs). While the general strategy is to standardise GUIs using no-/low-code solutions, complex use cases require more customised GUIs. For this, Python and Qt are combined through PyQt bindings. Qt5 has been used for several years but with its end-of-life already reached, migration to Qt6 is a priority. At the same time, GUI applications in the CERN Controls ecosystem require long-term stability that exceeds the software industry average. Therefore, the migration requires a lot of care, taking into account both maintenance costs and long-term risks associated with reliance on a 3rd-party technology. To plan the upgrades, alternatives to the current PyQt approach have been reviewed. In the past, PyQt5 was an obvious choice, but investment into the PySide library by the Qt Company now presents more options. We outline the criteria considered in our comparison of PyQt, PySide, and QML, and present the resulting decisions and rationale behind them. Finally, we discuss long-term risks associated with Qt bindings for Python and describe how we will manage the migration to future versions of the Qt framework, such as Qt7. |
| Paper | download: THPD078.pdf |
| Cite | BibTeX, LaTeX, Text/Word, RIS, EndNote |
| Conference | 20th Int. Conf. Accel. Large Exp. Phys. Control Syst. (ICALEPCS'25) |
| Series | |
| Location | Chicago, IL, USA |
| Date | 20-26 Sep 2025 |
| Publisher | JACoW Publishing, Geneva, Switzerland |
| Editorial Board | Kent Wootton (ANL), Jeffery Biss (FNAL), Gustavo Bruno (ANL), Jeff Kirchman (ANL), Kelly Jaje (ANL), Denise Skiadopoulos (ANL), SuYin Grass Wang (ANL) |
| Online ISBN | 978-3-95450-255-4 |
| Online ISSN | 2226-0358 |
| Received | 04 September 2025 |
| Revised | 20 September 2025 |
| Accepted | 28 October 2025 |
| Issued | 25 November 2025 |
| DOI | 10.18429/JACoW-ICALEPCS2025-THPD078 |
| Pages | 1769-1773 |
| Copyright | Published by JACoW Publishing under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s), the published article's title, publisher, and DOI. |