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SIP - A Python Bindings 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 collection of tools that makes it very easy to create Python
bindings
for C and C++ libraries. It was originally developed in 1998 to create
PyQt,
the Python bindings for the Qt toolkit, but can be used to create bindings
for
any C or C++ library. For example it is also used to generate wxPython,
the
Python bindings for wxWidgets.
SIP comprises a set of build tools and a sip module. The build tools
process a
set of specification files and generates C or C++ code which is then
compiled
to create the bindings extension module. Several extension modules may be
installed in the same Python package. Extension modules can be built so
that
they are are independent of the version of Python being used. In other
words a
wheel created from them can be installed with any version of Python
starting
with v3.8.
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 a copy of
the
corresponding header file.
The sip module provides support functions to the automatically generated
code. The sip module is installed as part of the same Python package as
the
generated extension modules. Unlike the extension modules the sip module
is
specific to a particular version of Python (e.g. v3.8, v3.9, v3.10, v3.11).
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 can be installed from PyPI::
pip install sip
Documentation
-------------
The documentation for the latest release can be found
[here].
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