Powerline: qtile widgets don't work

[quarkQuark]

I have been trying to get powerline working in qtile's built-in bar.

All the powerline documentation says about it is:

Add the following to :file:~/.config/qtile/config.py:

```` Python

from libqtile.bar import Bar
from libqtile.config import Screen
from libqtile.widget import Spacer

from powerline.bindings.qtile.widget import PowerlineTextBox

screens = [
Screen(
top=Bar([
PowerlineTextBox(update_interval=2, side='left'),
Spacer(),
PowerlineTextBox(update_interval=2, side='right'),
],
35 # width
),
),
]
````

Following this I got an error until I also added a text argument. So the relevant section of my config.py for qtile is:

PowerlineTextBox(
    update_interval = 2,  # the documentation says to use this, but I don't understand what it does
    side = left,  # whether this is set to right or left doesn't seem to change anything
    text = 'left',
    # bar_colours is defined earlier in my config file
    foreground = bar_colours[2],
    background = bar_colours[9],
    ),

Now there are no errors, but all I see in my panel is the word 'text' on a coloured background. I have tried adding various other instances of PowerlineTextBox and Spacer in different places but this makes no difference.
I haven't messed with any powerline configuration files at all, and I'm using the standard qtile and powerline packages from the Arch repos.

Issue #499 seems to offer an alternative method, but I can't work out what to do with the code snippets.

[BlitzKraft]

@quarkQuark As a temporary workaround, consider using lemonbar. It is better supported by powerine.