Location of sip files may be different based on distro/python version

[jwhendy]

Greetings,

Would you be able to take a look at this comment on this issue? We ran into a snag on arch linux with the code in sip_configure.py.

Compiling ros-melodic-rviz failed when trying to find the sip PyQt5 bindings, and installing the python2 variant of the package was a successful workaround. We've been updating everything to python3, so I looked into what was going on, as we don't really want to keep a package on python2 as a solution.

It looks like the file location for sip files changes. If you go to each of these, scroll down, and click "view the file list", you'll see the difference:

• python2-pyqt5: usr/share/sip/PyQt5/
• python-pyqt5: usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyQt5/bindings

In searching for the latter directory via google, I only get hits for arch linux. I'm not familiar with pyqt5 or sip; do you know where I could check the canonical install directory? I'm thinking either:

• the directory is changing in the future and it might be good for this package to accommodate, or
• something is awry with arch's package and we should change our install dir accordingly.

[dirk-thomas]

I don't know to what there packages equate on Ubuntu. The two Ubuntu packages python-pyqt5 and python3-pyqt5 seem to use the same (beside Python version) locations for the files.

The file QtCoremod.sip is part of the Ubuntu package pyqt5-dev which is not Python version specific.

Maybe you can provide more details what exact file your are looking for and which Ubuntu package provides them in what location.

[antonio-rojas]

The sip bindings location depends on the sip version used to compile pyqt. As distributions start moving to sip 5, they will start using the latter location.

[jwhendy]

I think this issue is that it can't find the root directory for any sip bindings. I don't have my build output up any longer, but don't recall a specific file it failed to find. To my memory, my output looked like this replicator's output (hence starting the debug there):

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/opt/ros/melodic/share/python_qt_binding/cmake/sip_configure.py", line 50, in get_sip_dir_flags
    sip_dir = config.pyqt_sip_dir
  File "/usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/sipconfig.py", line 192, in __getattr__
    raise AttributeError("\"%s\" is not a valid configuration value or user option" % name)
AttributeError: "pyqt_sip_dir" is not a valid configuration value or user option

I was looking for other distro locations for these files as well, thinking perhaps it was a python3.8 change. I found the same package on Ubuntu (and no python3 specific variant), then gave up and searched directly for /usr/lib/python3.8/site-packages/PyQt5/bindings and only got arch linux hits.

I think I've framed this question accurately: is /usr/lib/python3.x/site-packages/PyQt5/bindings a location that needs to be accounted for? I don't know how to answer this, and so far the data only suggests "arch is using a different place than Ubuntu," not why.

I posted here, as perhaps someone might understand why the get_sip_dir_flags() function is not working and/or where to check if a change is coming via sip/python3.8. I also just created a bug on the arch package to see if the maintainers can illuminate us.

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Edit: @antonio-rojas posted while I was writing this which might get at:

...where to check if a change is coming via sip

@antonio-rojas could you post a link to this information? arch is currently on 4.19.20.

[antonio-rojas]

I don't think this is documented anywhere other than the source code. Arch ships both sip 4 and sip 5. All python 3 bindings are built with sip 5.

[eli-schwartz]

One of my packages uses sip to build, and upstream adapted to sip5 with the following commit: kovidgoyal/calibre@5ef79c7