How to install PyQt4 on Windows using pip?

Question

Here are Windows wheel packages built by Chris Golke - Python Windows Binary packages - PyQt

In the filenames cp27 means C-python version 2.7, cp35 means python 3.5, etc.

Since Qt is a more complicated system with a compiled C++ codebase underlying the python interface it provides you, it can be more complex to build than just a pure python code package, which means it can be hard to install it from source.

Make sure you grab the correct Windows wheel file (python version, 32/64 bit), and then use pip to install it - e.g:

C:\path\where\wheel\is\> pip install PyQt4-4.11.4-cp35-none-win_amd64.whl

Should properly install if you are running an x64 build of Python 3.5.

QT no longer supports PyQt4, but you can install PyQt5 with pip:

pip install PyQt5

You can't use pip. You have to download from the Riverbank website and run the installer for your version of python. If there is no install for your version, you will have to install Python for one of the available installers, or build from source (which is rather involved). Other answers and comments have the links.

If you install PyQt4 on Windows, files wind up here by default:

C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\PyQt4*.*

but it also leaves a file here:

C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\sip.pyd

If you copy the both the sip.pyd and PyQt4 folder into your virtualenv things will work fine.

For example:

mkdir c:\code
cd c:\code
virtualenv BACKUP
cd c:\code\BACKUP\scripts
activate

Then with windows explorer copy from C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages the file (sip.pyd) and folder (PyQt4) mentioned above to C:\code\BACKUP\Lib\site-packages\

Then back at CLI:

cd ..                 
(c:\code\BACKUP)
python backup.py

The problem with trying to launch a script which calls PyQt4 from within virtualenv is that the virtualenv does not have PyQt4 installed and it doesn't know how to reference the default installation described above. But follow these steps to copy PyQt4 into your virtualenv and things should work great.