wheel 0.4

A built-package format for Python.

wheel

A built-package package format for Python.

Can be installed with a patched version of pip from https://github.com/dholth/pip

Requires a patched distribute from https://bitbucket.org/dholth/distribute

Work on the spec is at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1mWPyvoeiqCrAy4UPNnvaz7Cgrqm4s_cfaTauAeJWABI/edit

Why not egg?

Python’s egg format predates the packging related standards we have today, the most important being PEP 376 “Database of Installed Python Distributions” which specifies the .dist-info directory (instead of .egg-info) and PEP 345 “Metadata for Python Software Packages 1.2” which specifies how to express dependencies (instead of requires.txt in .egg-info).

Wheel implements these things. It also provides a richer file naming convention that communicates the Python implementation and ABI as well as simply the language version used in a particular package.

Unlike .egg, wheel will be a fully-documented standard at the binary level that is truly easy to install even if you do not want to use the reference implementation.

0.4

• improve test coverage

• improve Windows compatibility

• include tox.ini courtesy of Marc Abramowitz

• draft hmac sha-256 signing function

0.3

• prototype egg2wheel conversion script

0.2

• Python 3 compatibility

0.1

• Initial version