Compiling PyQt5 on Ubuntu 12.04

This guide provides basic instructions on getting PyQt5 compiled on Ubuntu 12.04 x64 for Python 2.7

Prerequisites

To complete this compilation, you'll need to three things.

1. Download and install Qt 5.3.1
2. Download and unpack sip-4.16.5
3. Download and unpack PyQt 5.3.2

5.4 was recently released, and it's quite likely that the process is identical to compiling 5.3.1, but I have yet to give it a try.

Installation

1. Install Qt

# First turn the newly downloaded file into an executable
$ chomd +x qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.3.1.run
$ ./qt-opensource-linux-x64-5.3.1.run

2. Install Dependencies

# Install C++ compiler for Make
$ sudo apt-get install build-essential

# Install Python source
$ sudo apt-get install python-dev

# Install PyQt-specific libraries for Ubuntu
$ sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-sdk-team/ppa
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install qtdeclarative5-dev

3. Compile SIP

$ cd sip-4.16.5
$ python configure.py
$ make
$ sudo make install

4. Compile PyQt

# --qmake: Tell compiler about location of Qt binaries
# --sip-incdir: Tell compiler about location of SIP
$ cd ../PyQt-gpl-5.3.2
$ python configure.py --qmake ~/Qt/5.3/gcc_64/bin/qmake --sip-incdir ../sip-4.16.5/siplib
$ make
$ sudo make install

Done

PyQt should now be accessible from the version of Python you first ran configure.py with.

>>> import sys
>>> from PyQt5 import QtWidgets
>>> app = QtWidgets.QApplication(sys.argv)
>>> button = QtWidgets.QPushButton("Hello, World!")
>>> button.show()

If this produces a new window with a single button in it, you're good to go!

References

• Plashless blog