sip 4.19

Python extension module generator for C and C++ libraries

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 sip Python module provides support functions to the automatically generated code.

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, and Linux 64-bit wheels, can be dowloaded from https://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/sip/download/.

Wheels for 32 and 64-bit Windows, 64-bit OS X and 64-bit Linux can be installed from PyPI:

pip3 install sip

All wheels include the sip extension module but do not include the code generator.

Documentation

The documentation for the latest release can be found here.