Installing wxPython in a virtualenv on Centos 6.7

I'm looking at wxPython to write a GUI for an app I'm working on, and as it turns out using wxPython with virtual environments isn't completely obvious. Hopefully someone finds this helpful.

My distribution is CentOS 6.7 with a hand-built Python 2.7.6.

Step 1: Install wxPython

This will install wxPython in your system's default Python library directory (not the one you want).

$ sudo yum install wxPython
$ sudo find / -name wx*.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wxversion.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wxPython/lib/wxpTag.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wxPython/lib/wxPlotCanvas.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wx/tools/XRCed/plugins/wxlib.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wx/tools/Editra/src/wxcompat.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wx/lib/wxcairo.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wx/lib/wxpTag.py
/usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wx/lib/wxPlotCanvas.py

Step 2: Create and activate your virtualenv

$ cd
$ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python2.7 venv
$ source venv/bin/activate

Importing wx will fail:

$ python
Python 2.7.6 (default, Dec  2 2013, 21:17:42) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import wx
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "", line 1, in
ImportError: No module named wx

Step 3: Symlink wxPython into your virtualenv

$ cd ~/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages
$ ln -s /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wx
$ ln -s /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wx-2.8-gtk2-unicode/wxPython
$ ln -s /usr/lib64/python2.6/site-packages/wxversion.py

Step 4: Start coding!

$ source venv/bin/activate
$ python
Python 2.7.6 (default, Dec  2 2013, 21:17:42) 
[GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-4)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import wx
>>> app = wx.App()
>>> frame = wx.Frame(None, -1, 'lol')
>>> frame.Show()
True
>>> app.MainLoop()

Note: I only just started playing with wxPython, so there may be other symlinks required to make it work. Let me know if so, and I'll update the post.