pip install pyqt fails

[pmav99]

Is it possible to install pyqt using pip (preferably in a virtualenv), or it has to be done manually?

[pmav99]

 $ pip install pyqt
Downloading/unpacking pyqt
  Downloading PyQt-x11-gpl-4.9.1.tar.gz (9.7Mb): 9.7Mb downloaded
  Running setup.py egg_info for package pyqt
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      File "<string>", line 14, in <module>
    IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/user/Programming/build/pyqt/setup.py'
    Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
    Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "<string>", line 14, in <module>

IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/home/user/Programming/build/pyqt/setup.py'

----------------------------------------
Command python setup.py egg_info failed with error code 1 in /home/user/Programming/build/pyqt
Storing complete log in /home/feanor/.pip/pip.log

[pnasrat]

According to the docs pyqt doesn't use the supported (distutils/distribute/setuptools) python mechanisms for building so is not installable via pip - instead it uses a configure.py and generates a Makefile and uses Make.

INSTALLATION

Check for any other README files in this directory that relate to your
particular platform.  Feel free to contribute a README for your platform or to
provide updates to any existing documentation.

The first step is to configure PyQt by running the following command.

        python configure.py

This assumes that the correct Python interpreter is on your path.  Something
like the following may be appropriate on Windows.

        c:\python31\python configure.py

If you have multiple versions of Python installed then make sure you use the
interpreter for which you wish to generate bindings for.

The configure.py script takes many options.  Use the "--help" command line
option to display a full list of the available options.

The next step is to build PyQt using your platform's make command.

        make

The final step is to install PyQt by running the following command.  (Depending
on your system you may require root or administrator privileges.)

[pnasrat]

You probably could build into your virtualenv by following the steps above using the path to the virtualenv python interpreter eg ve\bin\python where python is documented above.

[ssbarnea]

Personally I would vote for removing the PyQt from the PyPI because they author is does not care about maintaining it.

Anyway after spending a lot of time, I was able to find an workaround, here is the solution
http://stackoverflow.com/a/17613433/99834

Still, the author should fix the distribution, as currently is broken. Why to keep something broken on PyPi?

[pmav99]

@ssbarnea
The solution you propose is not the best one since it is not usable with virtualenvs

Jose Luis answer is probably better http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1961997/is-it-possible-to-add-pyqt4-pyside-packages-on-a-virtualenv-sandbox

Anyway your suggestion of removing pyqt from pypi should be made to pyqt devs. Pip is a different/unrelated project.