PyQt5-sip 4.19.18

Python extension module support for PyQt5

What is SIP?

One of the features of Python that makes it so powerful is the ability to take existing libraries, written in C or C++, and make them available as Python extension modules. Such extension modules are often called bindings for the library.

SIP is a tool that makes it very easy to create Python bindings for C and C++ libraries. It was originally developed to create PyQt, the Python bindings for the Qt toolkit, but can be used to create bindings for any C or C++ library.

SIP comprises a code generator and a Python module. The code generator processes a set of specification files and generates C or C++ code which is then compiled to create the bindings extension module. The Python module provides support functions to the automatically generated code. Normally a package containing SIP generated bindings includes a private copy of the Python module.

The specification files contain a description of the interface of the C or C++ library, i.e. the classes, methods, functions and variables. The format of a specification file is almost identical to a C or C++ header file, so much so that the easiest way of creating a specification file is to edit the corresponding header file.

SIP makes it easy to exploit existing C or C++ libraries in a productive interpretive programming environment. SIP also makes it easy to take a Python application (maybe a prototype) and selectively implement parts of the application (maybe for performance reasons) in C or C++.

Author

SIP is copyright (c) Riverbank Computing Limited. Its homepage is https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/sip/.

Support may be obtained from the PyQt mailing list at https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/mailman/listinfo/pyqt/.

License

SIP is released under the GPL v2, GPL v3 licenses, and under a license similar to the BSD license.

Installation

SIP source packages can be dowloaded from https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/sip/download/.

Wheels containing the private copy of the Python module for PyQt5 for 32 and 64-bit Windows, 64-bit macOS and 64-bit Linux can be installed from PyPI:

pip3 install PyQt5-sip

Documentation

The documentation for the latest release can be found here.