[Distutils] If you want wheel to be successful, provide a build server.

[Matthew Brett]

Hi,

On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Donald Stufft <donald at stufft.io> wrote:
>
>> On May 26, 2016, at 2:41 PM, Matthew Brett <matthew.brett at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Thu, May 26, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Daniel Holth <dholth at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Maybe there could be a way to say "the most recent release that has a wheel
>>> for my platform". That would help with the problem of binaries not being
>>> available concurrently with a new source distribution.
>>
>> Yes, that would certainly help get over some of the immediate problems.
>>
>> Sorry for my ignorance - but does ``--only-binary`` search for an
>> earlier release with a binary or just bomb out if the latest release
>> does not have a binary?   It would also be good to have a flag to say
>> "if this is pure Python go ahead and use the source, otherwise error".
>>   Otherwise I guess we'd have to rely on everyone with a pure Python
>> package generating wheels.
>
> I believe it would find the latest version that has a wheel available,
> I could be misremembering though.

Reflecting a bit more on this - how easy would be be to add a flag
``--prefer-binary`` that would have the effect of:

* Installing a binary wheel for current release if available, otherwise;
* Checking previous release for binary wheel, installing if present, otherwise;
* Install from sdist

I think that would help a great deal in reducing surprise in wheel
installs while we get better at putting up wheels at the same time as
sdists.

Cheers,

Matthew