Building pyqwt 5.2.0 by manually installing the pyqtconfig.py module.

For playing with GNU radio I had to install quite a lot of dependencies to get all the modules to build, unfortunately there's currently a build issue with PyQwt, which are the Python bindings for Qwt, the Qt Widgets for Technical Applications.

Installation of PyQwt-5.2.0 fails with an error message of...

Requires at least PyQt-4.2 and its development tools.
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
    Aborting...

...and this is because of the configuration script of PyQwt that tries to import PyQT's pqtconfig.py, that no longer is installed by PyQt 4.11.1!

There are a few bugreports to be found on the web, e.g.

• https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/issues/21984
• http://sourceforge.net/p/pyqwt/bugs/12/

To fix this, get yourself the pyqt-x11 source, then run the configure script as appropriate for your particular Linux installation...

[optiplex …/chris/AUR/python2-pyqt4/src/Py2Qt-x11-gpl-4.11.1]
$ python2 configure.py -v /usr/share/sip --qsci-api -q /usr/bin/qmake-qt4 Determining the layout of your Qt installation...
This is the GPL version of PyQt 4.11.1 (licensed under the GNU General Public
License) for Python 2.7.8 on linux2.
Type '2' to view the GPL v2 license.
Type '3' to view the GPL v3 license.
Type 'yes' to accept the terms of the license.
Type 'no' to decline the terms of the license.
Do you accept the terms of the license? yes
Found the license file pyqt-gpl.sip.
Checking to see if the QtGui module should be built...
Checking to see if the QtHelp module should be built...
Checking to see if the QtMultimedia module should be built...
Checking to see if the QtNetwork module should be built...

(...)

Creating pyrcc4 Makefile...
Creating Qt Designer plugin Makefile...
Creating pyqtconfig.py...

At this point, the proper pyqtconfig.py script has been created, install to the python site-package directory.

[optiplex …/chris/AUR/python2-pyqt4/src/Py2Qt-x11-gpl-4.11.1]
$ sudo install -m644 pyqtconfig.py /usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PyQt4/pyqtconfig.py 

Now, the pyqwt bindings can be built, e.g. by using ArchLinux's makepkg utility, using the AUR package.

[optiplex /home/chris/AUR/pyqwt]
$ makepkg
==> Making package: pyqwt 5.2.0-10 (Tue Aug 26 21:37:07 CEST 2014)
==> Checking runtime dependencies...
==> Checking buildtime dependencies...

(...)

==> Starting build()...
patching file qt4lib/PyQt4/Qwt5/qplt.py
patching file configure/configure.py
patching file configure/configure.py
Command line options:
{'debug': False,
 'disable_numarray': False,

(...)

cp -f ../../qt4lib/PyQt4/uic/widget-plugins/qwt.py /home/chris/AUR/pyqwt/pkg/pyqwt/usr/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PyQt4/uic/widget-plugins/qwt.py
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/chris/AUR/pyqwt/src/PyQwt-5.2.0/configure/qwt5qt4'
==> Tidying install...
  -> Purging unwanted files...
  -> Removing libtool files...
  -> Removing static library files...
  -> Compressing man and info pages...
  -> Stripping unneeded symbols from binaries and libraries...
==> Creating package "pyqwt"...
  -> Generating .PKGINFO file...
  -> Generating .MTREE file...
  -> Compressing package...
==> Leaving fakeroot environment.
==> Finished making: pyqwt 5.2.0-10 (Tue Aug 26 21:40:25 CEST 2014)