On Mar 30, 2015, at 10:58 AM, Xavier Fernandez <xav.fernandez@gmail.com> wrote:

Wheels without sdists are likely a generally bad idea, downstream
redistributors are not going to like them.

Why do you think that ? Wheels seem way simpler/saner than all the possible things setup.py can do.

Wheels are simpler than a setup.py, because wheels are a binary format and Wheels don’t need to

handle things like build software because it’s already been built. However downstream redistributors

will not accept a Wheel as the source for a package because it is a binary format. It doesn’t matter

if you can unzip it and there is pure python there, it is still a binary format. So if you release only Wheels

you’re essentially saying that downstream redistributors will never package your software (or any

software that depends on it).

A few issues that Wheel only has:

* If your project has a C extension, downstream redistributes need access to the source code not the

  compiled code (as does anyone wanting to use the project on platform you didn’t release for).

* If your project has tests that don’t get installed, they should get shipped as part of the sdist so that

  downstream can run them as part of their packaging activities to ensure they didn’t break anything

  in the test suite. However if you’re installing from Wheel you can’t do that.

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Donald Stufft

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