SIP (software)
title: "SIP (software)" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["programming-tools", "free-computer-programming-tools", "scripting-languages"] topic_path: "technology/programming-languages" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIP_(software)" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::data[format=table title="Infobox software"]
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| name | SIP |
| author | Phil Thompson |
| programming language | C, C++ |
| license | GPL and other |
| website | |
| :: |
| name = SIP | author = Phil Thompson | programming language = C, C++ | license = GPL and other | website =
SIP is an open source software tool used to connect computer programs or libraries written in C or C++ with the scripting language Python. It is an alternative to SWIG.
SIP was originally developed in 1998 for PyQt — the Python bindings for the Qt GUI toolkit — but is suitable for generating bindings for any C or C++ library.
Concept
SIP takes a set of specification (.sip) files describing the API and generates the required C++ code. This is then compiled to produce the Python extension modules. A .sip file is essentially the class header file with some things removed (because SIP does not include a full C++ parser) and some things added (because C++ does not always provide enough information about how the API works).
In terms of how the generated code works then I don't think it's very different from how any other bindings generator works. Python has a very good C API for writing extension modules - it's one of the reasons why so many 3rd party tools have Python bindings. For every C++ class, the SIP generated code creates a corresponding Python class implemented in C.|author=Phil Thompson|title=developer and maintainer}}
Notable applications that use SIP
- PyQt, a python port of the application framework and widget toolkit Qt
- QGIS, a free and open-source cross-platform desktop geographic information system (GIS)
- QtiPlot, a computer program to analyze and visualize scientific data
- calibre (software), a free and open-source cross-platform e-book manager
- Veusz, a free and open-source cross-platform program to visualize scientific data
References
References
- "Introduction — SIP". riverbankcomputing.com.
- (2006). "Phil Thompson Talks About PyQt". dot.kde.org.
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