[New-bugs-announce] [issue32295] User friendly message when invoking bdist_wheel sans wheel package

[Ernest W. Durbin III]

New submission from Ernest W. Durbin III <ewdurbin at gmail.com>:

Wheels are a well-known part of the Python packaging ecosystem at this point!

Many tutorials, gists, and other tools suggest to build wheels using setuptools and distutils, but may not remind users to install the wheel package.

In light of Issue 31634 being temporarily suspended and given that this does not interfere with experienced users implementing their own bdist_wheel command, it should be a welcome addition to help guide novice packagers in the right direction.

Result for a Python environment without the `wheel` package installed:

$ python3 setup.py bdist_wheel
usage: setup.py [global_opts] cmd1 [cmd1_opts] [cmd2 [cmd2_opts] ...]
   or: setup.py --help [cmd1 cmd2 ...]
   or: setup.py --help-commands
   or: setup.py cmd --help

error: invalid command 'bdist_wheel'
note: The wheel package provides this command. See https://packaging.python.org/tutorials/distributing-packages/#wheels for information on packaging wheels

----------
components: Distutils
messages: 308165
nosy: EWDurbin, dstufft, eric.araujo
priority: normal
pull_requests: 4715
severity: normal
status: open
title: User friendly message when invoking bdist_wheel sans wheel package
type: enhancement
versions: Python 3.7

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Python tracker <report at bugs.python.org>
<https://bugs.python.org/issue32295>
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