Python3 + ipython + pylab on Ubuntu 14.04

Question

I really want to switch to Python 3, but Ubuntu 14.04 makes it difficult to do so when using the IPython+pylab framework.

My settings: I have installed most of the important packages using pip rather than aptitude. Thes packages include numpy 1.10.1, scipy 0.16.1, matplotlib 1.5.0, pylab 0.1.0 and IPython 4.0.1.

I have also installed python3-pyqt5 5.2.1 and python3-pyside 1.2.1 using aptitude.

Using matplotlib from within IPython works well:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
plt.plot([0, 1], [1, 2])
plt.show()

But the problem starts when I try to use pylab, either by calling ipython --pylab or by calling pylab from within IPython. This is what I get in both of these cases:

ImportError: 
    Could not load requested Qt binding. Please ensure that
    PyQt4 >= 4.7, PyQt5 or PySide >= 1.0.3 is available,
    and only one is imported per session.

    Currently-imported Qt library:   'pyqt5'
    PyQt4 installed:                 False
    PyQt5 installed:                 False
    PySide >= 1.0.3 installed:       True
    Tried to load:                   ['pyqt5']

So, if I understand it properly, it does not recognize that PyQt5 is installed. This is weird for two reasons; first, import PyQt5 and import PyQt5.QtCore both don't complain. The second reason is that a second call to pylab works perfectly, and with Qt5!

Using matplotlib backend: Qt5Agg
Populating the interactive namespace from numpy and matplotlib

However, there's another consequence for this. After plotting, successfully (say, with plot([0, 1], [1, 2])), when I exit IPython using Ctrl-D, I get a Segmentation fault (core dumped).

This is a problem I have for about 3 months now. I have already posted a couple of questions here: Really installing PyQt4/5 for python 3.4 on trusty and https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32007733/pip-install-pyside-fails. I have tried probably almost all combinations of installing pyside/pyqt5/numpy/scipy/matplotlib/ipython/pylab via pip/aptitude. Nothing seems to work properly.

score 5 · Answer 1 · edited Dec 02 '15 at 23:41

On Ubuntu 14.04, I could start ipython and then import PyQt5, but if I run ipython --matplotlib qt5, it states pyqt5 is not installed.

I then looked into the code and saw in the file /usr/local/lib/python3.4/dist-packages/IPython/external/qt_loaders.py, that ipython checks for QtCore, QtGui, Qtsvg and in the case of pyqt5 also for qtwidgets. Naturally, I did have QtCore, QtGui and QtWidgets installed, but not Qtsvg. I ran synaptic and installed Qtsvg for pyqt5 (that is python3-pyqt5.qtsvg). Now it works.

TL;DR: Install the python3-pyqt5.qtsvg package:

sudo apt-get install python3-pyqt5.qtsvg

Python3 + ipython + pylab on Ubuntu 14.04

1 Answers1