Wing IDE is an integrated development environment that can be used to write, test, and debug Python code that is written for the PyQt cross-platform GUI development toolkit. Wing provides auto-completion, call tips, a powerful debugger, and many other features that help you write, navigate, and understand Python code.

For more information on Wing IDE see the product overview. If you do not already have Wing IDE installed, download a free trial now.

To get started using Wing, refer to the tutorial in the Help menu in Wing and/or the Wing IDE Quickstart Guide.

Introduction

PyQt is a commercial GUI development environment that runs with native look and feel on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS, and mobile devices. While Wing IDE does not include a GUI builder for PyQt, it does provide the most advanced capabilities available for the Python programming language and it can be used with other available GUI builders, as described below.

Installation and Configuration

Take the following steps to set up and configure Wing IDE for use with PyQt:

Test Driving the Debugger

Now you're ready to try out the debugger. To do this:

See the Wing IDE Tutorial and Quick start for more information.

Test Driving the Source Browser

Don't forget to check out Wing's powerful source browser:

Using a GUI Builder

Wing IDE doesn't currently include a GUI builder for PyQt but it can be used with an external GUI builder. Wing will automatically reload files that are written by the GUI builder, making for a fairly seamless integration.

A Caveat: Because Python lends itself so well to writing data-driven code, you may want to reconsider using a GUI builder for some tasks. In many cases, Python's introspection features make it possible to write generic GUI code that you can use to build user interfaces on the fly based on models of your data and your application. This can be much more efficient than using a GUI builder to craft individual menus and dialogs by hand. In general model-driven GUIs also tend to be more maintainable, and the Qt widget set was designed specifically to make hand-coding easy.