Because installing some python packages from source on windows is painful, I decided to install from binaries. This simplifies the process quite a bit.
The two strategies I outline here may, if fact, be used for many packages for which there is an installer available
Christophe Gohlke mainatains a webpage that lists the binaries for many python libraries, particularly ones that scientific applications. You can use this site to Download the installers for PyQt or PySide.
Download the installer for you platform.
Run the installer, but instead of installing to your global site-packages folder install to some other location. I made a separate folder under my home folder to hold binaries that I want to use in virtualenv.
Then just copy the files that were installed into your desired virtualenv’s site-packages directory.
That’s it! You should be able to activate your virtualenv and run
python -c "from PyQt4 import QtCore"
and not receive an error.
For PySide there is also another (slighly easier) option.
Download the installer for you platform.
With your virtaulenv active, run easy install on the installer executable, e.g.:
easy_install PySide-1.2.2.win32-py2.7.exe
That Should do it! Check the installation by running
python -c "from PyQt4 import QtCore"
without receiving an error.