Develop Reference

Meeting a pip requirement using an alternative module

I'm trying to install a python module, 'pyAudioProcessing' (https://github.com/jsingh811/pyAudioProcessing) on my Linux Mint distribution, and one of the items in requirements.txt is causing issues: python-magic-bin==0.4.14. When I run pip3 install -e pyAudioInstaller, I get an error:
ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement python-magic-bin==0.4.14 (from pyAudioProcessing==1.1.5) (from versions: none)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for python-magic-bin==0.4.14 (from pyAudioProcessing==1.1.5)
The same error appears if I try to manually install the module using pip3 install python-magic-bin. The module installs without issues on my windows machine.
pypi.org lets me download files for it manually, however only Windows and MacOS .whl files are available. I tried simply removing the requirement from the list, but that resulted in a large number of other errors to appear, so I assume the module is legitimately required.
Thee is another module called python-magic-debian-bin that I can download. Is there a simple way to convince pyAudioInstaller to use this other module instead of the original? Like can I somehow rename python-magic-debian-bin to python-magic-bin and hope it works out?

python-magic-bin 0.4.14 provides wheels for OSX, w32 and w64, but not for Linux. And there is no source code at PyPI.
You need to install it from github:
pip install git+https://github.com/julian-r/python-magic.git
As for pyAudioProcessing I can see 2 ways to install it:
Clone the repository and edit requirements/requirements.txt, replace python-magic-bin==0.4.14 with pip install git+https://github.com/julian-r/python-magic.git#egg=python-magic;
Install requirements manually and then install pyAudioProcessing without dependencies:
pip install --no-deps pyAudioProcessing
or
pip install --no-deps git+https://github.com/jsingh811/pyAudioProcessing.git

The library has updated the requirements very recently for it to work on Linux.
pip install -U pyAudioProcessing
Should get it all set up for you.
Alternatively, https://github.com/jsingh811/pyAudioProcessing the readme describes other getting started methods as well.

Setup.py reinstalling already installed user-written package

I am developing two python packages, pkg_a and pkg_b. pkg_a is a requirement for pkg_b, and so the setup.py for pkg_b looks like this:
from setuptools import setup
inst_reqs = [
'pkg_a # git+ssh://git#bitbucket.org/vlad/pkg_a.git',
]
setup(
name="pkg_b",
version="0.0.0",
packages=['pkg_b'],
install_requires=inst_reqs,
)
Since I am developing both packages simultaneously, pkg_a is already installed in editable mode (pip install -e .).
When pip installing pkg_b, why is the existing installation of pkg_a removed? It looks like pip will systematically cone the specified repo, uninstall the existing pkg_a and reinstall it from the cloned repo:
Successfully built pkg_a
Installing collected packages: pkg_a, pkg_b
Attempting uninstall: pkg_a
Found existing installation: pkg_a 0.0.0
Uninstalling pkg_a-0.0.0:
Successfully uninstalled pkg_a-0.0.0
Running setup.py develop for pkg_b
Successfully installed pkg_a-0.0.0 pkg_b
I'm guessing this has to with versioning but I don't know how to fix this. Any tips?

That is how VCS dependencies are handled. You should specify a fixed reference (tag, commit id):
'pkg_a # git+ssh://git#bitbucket.org/vlad/pkg_a.git#da39a3ee5e6b4b0d3255bfef95601890afd80709'
See: https://pip.pypa.io/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#git
If you do not specific a fixed reference (non-moving tag, or commit ID), then pip has to clone every time since the content of the repository might have changed since the last installation.
(To be honest, even after this change, it might still be that pip will re-clone at each installation, I do not remember the exact behavior off the top of my head.)
See similar question: pip install upgrade fail to upgrade private dependency

setup.py egg_info error code 3221225477

I've been trying to install IMGAUG package for an ML project. But the installation gets stuck when it tries to install scikit-image
My input: pip install scikit-image
output:
Collecting imgaug
Using cached
https://files.pythonhosted.org/...
Requirement already satisfied: scipy in
c:\users\*<username>*\appdata\local\programs\python\python37\lib\site-
packages (from imgaug) (1.1.0)
Collecting scikit-image>=0.11.0 (from imgaug)
Using cached https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/...
Complete output from command python setup.py egg_info:
----------------------------------------
Command "python setup.py egg_info" failed with error code 3221225477 in
C:\Users\<name>~1.<name2>\AppData\Local\Temp\pip-install-qmdp6ysz\scikit-image\
Note: I've already tried installing other versions of it, upgrading setuptools and pip. Error persists.
PS: Now it's showing up on everything I try to install.

(Scroll down to a horizontal line to skip explanation and go straight to the suggested solution if you wish)
3221225477 is 0xC0000005 which is NTSTATUS STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION; the corresponsing error message is The instruction at 0x%08lx referenced memory at 0x%08lx. The memory could not be %s..
In Windows, a process usually quits with this exit code if it tries to access an invalid memory address and Windows terminates it as a result. If you install Visual Studio, you'll be able to pinpoint the exact module at fault as shown on the link.
Now, this error means a bug in or an incompatibility between some of your installed extension modules (or in Python engine itself, but this is very unlikely in comparison).
The easiest way to fix is to clean up any problems with the involved modules' installation and (if that isn't enough) update them to the latest versions, hoping that whatever is causing that is fixed in them.
In particular, scipy in c:\users\*<username>*\appdata\local\programs\python\python37\lib\site-packages looks suspicious: you aren't using --user in your pip command
which suggests that your didn't pay attention to this flag when using pip before (it's official that it CAN lead to version conflicts), and some of your installed packages are installed both into %ProgramFiles%\Python37\Lib\site-packages and %APPDATA%\Python\Python37\ib\site-packages, with different versions in these two locations.
I hereby suggest you to:
decide where you want your 3rd-party modules to be
%ProgramFiles% is system-wide and requires elevation to manage, %APPDATA% is per-user and doesn't require elevation
Unless you don't have administrative rights at your machine (you do, judging by the command you gave) or have special needs, keep everything in the system-wide location for simplicity
uninstall all the modules in the other location (pip uninstall <name(s)> with or without --user)
reinstall them to the desired location, updating existing versions (-U pip flag)
if that wasn't enough to solve the problem (very unlikely), update all packages to the latest versions

This happened to me also. However I resolved it by uninstalling the package (pip uninstall ), then installing it using conda rather than pip (conda install ).

python requirements: how to get identical versions?

This question is a consequence of the principal
solution of requirement specifation:
python django pip update problems: how to get compatible versions?
I try to synchronize the python requirements between a server
and the local development systems. Both are Ubuntu 16.04.,
so this should be a problem.
The server gives me a requirement file (after pip-installing django as described in the other quewtion).
But pip-installing the requirements on the local machine gives some errors,
like this:
Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement python-
apt==1.1.0b1 (from -r requirements.txt (line 3)) (from versions: 0.0.0,
0.7.8) No matching distribution found for python-apt==1.1.0b1 (from -r
requirements.txt
Is there a way to ensure, that requirements can be met on similar systems
without getting such errors caused by version incompatiblities
(or of cause alterantively solve the incompatibility problems)?
Do I need virtual environments to solve this?
Or even pipenv?
Or is there a simple straightforward way to have two systems with
compatible python and package environments?

Problem
This particular module (python-apt) is only available on PyPi with version 0.7.8. However, this release appears to have been a mistake!
One of the developers & Debian package maintainers for python-apt has stated the following:
Aargh, not this whole PyPI thing again. Nobody ever officially
uploaded python-apt there. It is tightly coupled with APT, and
not supposed to be distributed in any fashion other than via
Debian packages.
There is no, and has never been any support for PyPi. And I can
say that I have absolutely no interest in duplicating work there.
Source: Debian "Deity" Mailing List 2016-11-22 msg#00094
You can install python-apt from apt, we do not provide python-apt on pip. I recently got control over the pypi entry and need to do something with it. I'm not keen on providing python-apt outside of the distro, though (python-apt and apt versions x.y need to match), so I'd rather just get rid of it, so people stop with questions about outdated versions.
Source: python-apt#1883451
So at least for this dependency, it appears that we're out of luck when resolving dependencies python-natively via pip + PyPi. Luckily, the upstream project is hosted on the salsa.debian.org GitLab instance, and pip supports git+ SCM urls now, among other options.
Solutions:
Generally, there are many solutions for resolving such a dependency. The concerns you are trying to address are:
Where is this package being provided from?
System OS package manager
Arbitrary Upstream Release URL
Development SCM Repo
Forked Git Repo with bugfixes
etc...
What Version will you be installing?
Compatibility concerns:
Must be >= 2.0.0
Forked repo / feature branch with some bugfix
API Compatibility: Not greater than 2.x / Semantic Versioning
Development:
Just use latest & greatest ( bleeding edge )
Use a specific version for my platform or system (e.g.: system OS package, my local forked version in a development directory)
QA / Testing:
Test against a specific version
Test against latest (e.g.: nightly builds)
Test against a version provided by a system OS release
How should the dependency be resolved?
"abstract" dependency on pip-module-name + version constraint
Allows for some flexibility later on with where to gather (URL / PyPi / Artifactory) and what version is allowed to satisfy the constraint.
User can always override these if needed by specifying arguments to pip, installing using a specific virtualenv, etc...
"concrete" dependency on a specific URL + package-name + version
Extreme case: Locking to a specific URL + version + sha1 / sha256 / sha** with checksum verification to ensure exact location & file integrity.
Less flexible, but most assuredly locked to an exact and precise version & source.
Are you developing an "application" or a "library" / Python module?
Do the dependencies need to be installed via pip using setup.py install_requires = [...] style resolution? (library)
Do the dependencies need to be installed by the application installer via pip install -r requirements.txt? (application)
How will your project be released?
Who will be installing the package, and how will their system be allowed to resolve the dependency?
Is this going to be released on PyPi as a library, or elsewhere as an application? (some rules of thumb follow)
Generally speaking:
A library tends to want to have wide open ended version specifiers
An application wants very specific dependencies to ensure stability (lots of dependencies means lots of generally untested version permutations!)
Use setup.py to specify the library dependencies for PyPi
Use requirements.txt to specify an application's dependencies
Is this going to be packaged as a native OS package? (e.g.: .deb, .rpm, .apk, etc...)
The native package manager has dependency resolution too... perhaps use this to ensure native compatibility!
What other OS platforms will your package support & how will those platforms resolve the dependency?
So, most generally we can see that there are various concerns all relating to the desired specificity of where and how these dependencies get resolved and installed. There is no "one size fits all" solution here... There are Pros and Cons, and only many different solutions that fall somewhere on the spectrum of:
more specific <---------------------> less specific
reliable compatibility reliable installability
less testing permutations more (possibly un-vetted) testing permutations
limited platform support more platform support (when more permutations are well tested)
dependable known configurations less dependable known configurations
less platform tolerant more tolerant and agnostic of platforms
more OS native less OS native
Latest & Greatest from GitLab Upstream Repo
One solution to the python-apt package issue is to use this git+ URL feature in requirements.txt. This is great for development against the upstream version of python-apt from GitLab. To further isolate installation from the system OS provided version of python-apt, a virtualenv or pip install --user may be desired. For example:
requirements.txt:
--index-url https://pypi.python.org/simple/
-e git+https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt.git#egg=python-apt
-e .
This can be used by an example project with setup.py containing:
[...SNIP...] # Boilerplate stuff here
setup(
#[...SNIP...] # Other setup() args here
platforms=['linux'],
# Reference:
# - https://github.com/pypa/interoperability-peps/pull/30/files#r184839487
# sudo apt install python3-apt apt-rdepends apt
# os_requires=[
# ['python3-apt', type='packagename', target='run', os='ubuntu'],
# ['apt-rdepends', type='packagename', target='run', os='ubuntu'],
# ['apt', type='packagename', target='run', os='ubuntu']
# ['libapt-pkg-dev', type='packagename', target='build', os='ubuntu']
# ]
# Build-deps for apt-python via git SCM: sudo apt install libapt-pkg-dev
python_requires='>=3.5',
install_requires=[
'python-apt (>= 2.0)',
# rest of your dependencies here
#[... SNIP ...]
],
package_dir={'': 'lib'},
scripts=_glob('bin/*'),
#[...SNIP...]
)
Note: os_requires isn't actually supported yet, but is proposed for a PEP. This might help in the future for external dependencies on packages. It would help in situations like this where a python module is not distributed via PyPi / pip, but instead is only provided via apt / .deb packages on the OS.
Set up your virtualenv or use pip3 install --user if you wish, then continue.
Using the git+ requirements feature results in the following when running pip3 install -r requirements.txt:
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Obtaining file:///../example-project (from -r requirements.txt (line 4))
Obtaining python-apt from git+https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt.git#egg=python-apt (from -r requirements.txt (line 3))
Updating ./example-project-venv/src/python-apt clone
Running command git fetch -q --tags
Running command git reset --hard -q c97d4159beae2f9cd42d55d3dff9c37f5c69aa44
ERROR: example-project 0.0.1 has requirement python-apt>=2.0, but you'll have python-apt 0.0.0 which is incompatible.
Installing collected packages: python-apt, example-project
Running setup.py develop for python-apt
Running setup.py develop for example-project
Successfully installed example-project python-apt
Note: You'll probably want to install runtime & build / setup.py dependencies for python-apt first:
# Runtime deps (e.g.: Ubuntu 20.04 needs python3-apt, <20.04 needs python-apt):
sudo apt install python3-apt apt
# python-apt pip install deps (also for setup.py / development)
sudo apt install libapt-pkg-dev
Alternative: dependency_links (Note: may be deprecated)
If you are developing a library type module, and also wish to use GitLab as source for python-apt you may want to consider using dependency_links in setup.py to provide the git+ or http(s) tarball release URL rather than in requirements.txt. This is helpful to distinguish an "application" python project from a "library" Python module project. It all depends on what your project's install process looks like. (e.g.: do you want to pip install -r requirements.txt, or just pip install example-module, or python[3] setup.py {sdist,bdist,bdist_rpm, etc...}. It could also be helpful to specify a custom URL for a forked version of python-apt. However, this method is likely to be deprecated sometime soon (if not partially already in new versions of pip). You may want to consider other options for future-proofing your dependency specifications such as PEP 508 or pip install --find-links ... instead.
Also, the "application" vs "library" distinction can be important here, as well as the concepts of "abstract" vs. "concrete" dependencies. A quick summary might be:
This split between abstract and concrete is an important one. It was
what allows the PyPI mirroring infrastructure to work. It is what
allows a company to host their own private package index. It is even
what enables you to fork a library to fix a bug or add a feature and
use your own fork. Because an abstract dependency is a name and an
optional version specifier you can install it from PyPI or from
Crate.io, or from your own filesystem. You can fork a library, change
the code, and as long as it has the right name and version specifier
that library will happily go on using it.
Setuptools has a feature similar to the Go example. It’s called
dependency links and it looks like this:
setup(
# ...
dependency_links = [
"http://packages.example.com/snapshots/",
"http://example2.com/p/bar-1.0.tar.gz",
], ) ```
This “feature” of setuptools removes the abstractness of its
dependencies and hardcodes an exact url from which you can fetch the
dependency from. Now very similarly to Go if we want to modify
packages, or simply fetch them from a different server we’ll need to
go in and edit each package in the dependency chain in order to update
the dependency_links.
Source: caremad.io Blog Post: setup.py vs requirements.txt
For this python-apt example, we might use something like this to lock a "concrete dependency" on v2.0.0:
setup(
# [...SNIP...]
dependency_links = [
"https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz#egg=python-apt"
],
# [...SNIP...]
) `
Note: This "mis-feature" was briefly removed, and then brought back given some usefulness in specifying private package dependency URLs. However, currently pip --process-dependency-links flag has been deprecated, so its' usefulness is probably limited to older versions of Python 2 + pip.
Alternative: PEP 508 Syntax
Newer versions of pip now have URL support for PEP 508 syntax. This is probably the most future-proof method for specifying concrete and abstract dependencies with a complex grammar (See PEP 508 for details). Packages can now be specified in many ways, including custom URLs.
For example, to lock python-apt to v2.0.0 with optional sha256 checksum:
setup(
# [...SNIP...]
install_requires=[
'python-apt#https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz#sha256=1ddbd3eb7cbc1ded7e0e8a2dd75219f0c59c7e062c6e6bfd5c8ff6f656c59a4e',
# [...SNIP...]
],
# [...SNIP...]
)
requirements.txt:
--index-url https://pypi.python.org/simple/
-e .
Then, pip install -r requirements.txt still works without any extra flags:
$ ./example-project-venv/bin/python3 ./example-project-venv/bin/pip3 install -r requirements.txt
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Obtaining file://./src/pub/example-project (from -r requirements.txt (line 4))
Requirement already satisfied: graph-tools>=1.5 in ./example-project-venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from example-project==0.0.1->-r requirements.txt (line 4)) (1.5)
Collecting python-apt# https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz#sha256=1ddbd3eb7cbc1ded7e0e8a2dd75219f0c59c7e062c6e6bfd5c8ff6f656c59a4e
Using cached https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz (458 kB)
Building wheels for collected packages: python-apt
Building wheel for python-apt (setup.py) ... done
Created wheel for python-apt: filename=python_apt-0.0.0-cp38-cp38-linux_x86_64.whl size=2040980 sha256=79eeb0d1bb9e3c9785acb68f164a3f72a5777539137d180e9ded7558d2547a49
Stored in directory: ~/.cache/pip/wheels/c4/09/b5/36fc8c9a1ebe8786620db922f1495da200dce187ee7c618993
Successfully built python-apt
Installing collected packages: python-apt, example-project
Attempting uninstall: example-project
Found existing installation: example-project 0.0.1
Uninstalling example-project-0.0.1:
Successfully uninstalled example-project-0.0.1
Running setup.py develop for example-project
Successfully installed example-project python-apt-0.0.0
Alternative: pip install --find-links ...
Another alternative method for installing a "concrete dependency" locked to a specific version is to pass --find-links to pip install with a released tarball file. This method might be helpful for explicitly installing a specific version given a release URL. For example, using python-apt v2.0.0:
$ ./example-project-venv/bin/python3 ./example-project-venv/bin/pip3 install --find-links 'https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz' -r requirements.txt
Looking in indexes: https://pypi.python.org/simple/
Looking in links: https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz
Obtaining file://./example-project (from -r requirements.txt (line 4))
Requirement already satisfied: graph-tools>=1.5 in ./example-project-venv/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from example-project==0.0.1->-r requirements.txt (line 4)) (1.5)
Collecting python-apt>=2.0
Downloading https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz (458 kB)
|████████████████████████████████| 458 kB 614 kB/s
WARNING: Requested python-apt>=2.0 from https://salsa.debian.org/apt-team/python-apt/-/archive/2.0.0/python-apt-2.0.0.tar.gz (from example-project==0.0.1->-r requirements.txt (line 4)), but installing version 0.0.0
Building wheels for collected packages: python-apt
Building wheel for python-apt (setup.py) ... done
Created wheel for python-apt: filename=python_apt-0.0.0-cp38-cp38-linux_x86_64.whl size=2040783 sha256=d0a8f88c04f202e948b9855837140517d9b2bd3cef72e626221614552a476780
Stored in directory: ~/.cache/pip/wheels/8a/07/e9/b3c3328bac08c030a5b1e754e01e327b62fd26f9baedf07c15
Successfully built python-apt
ERROR: example-project 0.0.1 has requirement python-apt>=2.0, but you'll have python-apt 0.0.0 which is incompatible.
Installing collected packages: python-apt, example-project
Attempting uninstall: python-apt
Found existing installation: python-apt 0.0.0
Uninstalling python-apt-0.0.0:
Successfully uninstalled python-apt-0.0.0
Attempting uninstall: example-project
Found existing installation: example-project 0.0.1
Uninstalling example-project-0.0.1:
Successfully uninstalled example-project-0.0.1
Running setup.py develop for example-project
Successfully installed example-project python-apt-0.0.0
Base System Debian Package
On Debian & Ubuntu, there are two .deb packages you'll see on the various distribution versions: python3-apt and python-apt (for Python2).
These packages are managed by the APT package manager, and thus are installed in the system location: /usr/lib/python3/dist-packages or /usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages for Python3 & Python2.7 respectively.
This dist-packages path, and other Python packaging conventions are explained well in this post:
The system has installed Python packages in the global dist-packages directory of each Python version and created symbolic links:
/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/numpy
/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/numpy
ls -ls /usr/include/numpy
#-> ../lib/python2.7/dist-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy
ls -l /usr/include/python2.7/numpy
#->../../lib/python2.7/dist-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy
ls -l /usr/include/python3.5/numpy
#-> ../../lib/python3/dist-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy
Note the good use of dist-packages instead of site-packages which should be reserved for the system Python.
So, if you're looking to use the base-OS system level version of python3-apt then you'd want to make sure that this path is on your sys.path or PYTHONPATH so import apt will work. Whereas, if you wanted to use the site-packages location, or a virtualenv location... those would have to exist on sys.path / PYTHONPATH instead.
Unfortunately, as mentioned before, there is not yet an official way to state a dependency on an OS package providing a certain version of a python module. However, as long as you're managing your python runtime environment's import path(s), you should be able to use the correct version from the OS package that lives in the dist-packages directory.

Indeed, python-apt's latest version is 0.7.8 https://pypi.org/project/python-apt/
If you're 100% sure it's the same package, try to change it in your requirements.txt file.
On the other hand, you could try seeing where is that python-apt on your local.
import apt
print(apt.__file__) # or print(apt.__path__)
And then, go there and check manually what is that python-apt package exactly.

Is it possible to require PyQt from setuptools setup.py?

I'm building a small app that uses PyQt and tought it'd be nice to declare that dependency in setup.py.
However, according to this blog (first hit on google for pyqt setuptools) says it can't be done, and the last paragraph here doens't try to do it either.
Ideas? Perhaps I should switch to PySide which is on PyPi?
Update:
The obvious install_requires = [ 'pyqt >= 0.7' ] in setup.py gives me:
D:\3rd\BuildBotIcon\my-buildboticon\python>setup.py test
running test
install_dir .
Checking .pth file support in .
C:\Python26-32\pythonw.exe -E -c pass
Searching for pyqt>=4.7
Reading http://pypi.python.org/simple/pyqt/
Reading http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/
Reading http://www.riverbankcomputing.com/software/pyqt/download
No local packages or download links found for pyqt>=4.7
error: Could not find suitable distribution for Requirement.parse('pyqt>=4.7')

Right, the PyQT packages are not using distutils / setup.py for it's installation, so they can't be installed with easy_install or pip. You need to download and install it manually.
That also means you should not put it in your requires metadata, as easy_install and pip then will try to install it and fail.
I don't know if PySide is any good, but is also has not setup.py, and also refuse to install with easy_install/pip, so not a good option. :)
Another option is to repackage PyQt with distutils, but that may be a lot of work.

While you can pip install pyqt5 thanks to the now available wheels (as suggested by #mfitzp), it cannot be required from setup.py via install_requires. The reason is that setuptools doesn't know how to install wheels which pip knows how to, and PyQT5 is only available as wheels on PyPI (there is no source distribution, i.e. no tar.gz file). See this email and that bug report for details.

While the accepted answer was originally correct Python Wheels now provide a means to install C extension packages such as PyQt5 without the need for compilation from source.
PyPi currently has .whl files for PyQt5 on Python3 for multiple platforms, including MacOS X, Linux (any), Win32 and Win64. For example, this is the output when pip-installing PyQt5 on Python3 on a Mac:
mfitzp#MacBook-Air ~ $ pip3 install pyqt5
Collecting pyqt5
Downloading PyQt5-5.6-cp35-cp35m-macosx_10_6_intel.whl (73.2MB)
100% |████████████████████████████████| 73.2MB 2.5kB/s
Collecting sip (from pyqt5)
Downloading sip-4.18-cp35-cp35m-macosx_10_6_intel.whl (46kB)
100% |████████████████████████████████| 49kB 1.8MB/s
Installing collected packages: sip, pyqt5
Successfully installed pyqt5-5.6 sip-4.18
If you are targeting Python3+PyQt5 then you should have no problem specifying PyQt5 as a normal dependency in setup.py.

Setuptools >= 38.2.0 now knows how to install wheels. The trivial answer, therefore, is to install a recent version of setuptools and require that your enlightened userbase does so as well. To enforce usage of setuptools >= 38.2.0 at installation time, see this relevant answer elsewhere.
Since setuptools 38.2.0 was released over a year ago, all prior answers to this question are horrifyingly obsolete, blatantly wrong, and less than useful.