[Distutils] pip merges wheel

[Paul Moore]

On 18 March 2013 09:08, Glyph <glyph at twistedmatrix.com> wrote:

> My understanding is that in order to achieve this nirvana, what we must do
> is:

(Daniel may wish to chime in with more details)

> A twisted developer, on each supported Windows configuration, must 'pip
> install wheel; pip wheel ./Twisted' and place that build artifact on PyPI.

To create the wheel, just run pip wheel <a twisted sdist>, as you say
on each supported Windows configuration. And it doesn't have to just
be Windows - if you care to, builds for other platforms can also be
created the same way. This may save on the "you need the following dev
packages installed" type of FAQs.

> Make our dependencies do the same thing.

If the dependencies don't, install from source will still work, so
it's probably not crucial for pure Python dependencies.

> Tell our users to do 'pip install --use-wheel twisted'
>
> I have two questions: first, is this sequence of steps accurate,

See above, but basically yes.

> and if it
> is, why is '--use-wheel' not just the default?  Does this option just mean
> '--please-work --no-really' or is there some functional change in behavior
> in using wheels that might cause problems?

It simply reflects that the wheel format and pip's support of it is
relatively new, and so somewhat experimental. There's no functional
change other than the fact that you get a wheel install if one's
available - or at least there shouldn't be :-) In due course, I expect
--use-wheel to become the default. We may offer a --no-wheel option at
that stage, if it seems useful.

Paul