Orange wheel requires Qt

[janezd]

What's wrong?

I created a new environment with Orange, without Qt, because I only needed a headless Orange (use case: Orada). Importing orange results in the following error.

/Users/janez/miniforge3/envs/orada/bin/python /Users/janez/dev/orada/backend/app.py 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/janez/dev/orada/backend/dataset.py", line 11, in <module>
    import Orange
  File "/Users/janez/miniforge3/envs/orada/lib/python3.12/site-packages/Orange/__init__.py", line 4, in <module>
    from Orange import data
  File "/Users/janez/miniforge3/envs/orada/lib/python3.12/site-packages/Orange/data/__init__.py", line 4, in <module>
    from .variable import *
  File "/Users/janez/miniforge3/envs/orada/lib/python3.12/site-packages/Orange/data/variable.py", line 1, in <module>
    from orangecanvas.utils.localization.si import plsi, plsi_sz, z_besedo
  File "/Users/janez/miniforge3/envs/orada/lib/python3.12/site-packages/orangecanvas/utils/__init__.py", line 12, in <module>
    from AnyQt.QtCore import Qt
  File "/Users/janez/miniforge3/envs/orada/lib/python3.12/site-packages/AnyQt/QtCore.py", line 1, in <module>
    from . import _api
  File "/Users/janez/miniforge3/envs/orada/lib/python3.12/site-packages/AnyQt/_api.py", line 116, in <module>
    raise ImportError("PyQt4, PyQt5, PySide or PySide2 are not available for import")
ImportError: PyQt4, PyQt5, PySide or PySide2 are not available for import

Process finished with exit code 1

This happens because pip instal orange3 runs Orange through trubar, which translates it. Translated orange imports from orangecanvas.utils.localization.si, which executes orangecanvas/utils/__init__.py, which in turn imports Qt. Since orangecanvas depends on Qt (though not through requirements, to allow using different versions of Qt), it has every right to import it.

I am reporting the problem here, though the first solution that comes to mind is to move localization module from orangecanvas.utils.localization to orangecanvas.localization to avoid importing Qt. Note after discussion with @markotoplak: the old location must still work (e.g. import * from the new location) otherwise we'd also have to re-release all add-ons.

This will affect anybody who wants to run headless Orange. This "anybody" probably doesn't mean "manybody", hence no need to rush into 3.38.1.

How can we reproduce the problem?

Create an environment, install Orange, import it.

What's your environment?

• Operating system: macOS
• Orange version: 3.38
• How you installed Orange: pip