Starting a new thread - I think the first one has served it's purpose. I use, successfully, pip build; pip install to build and install modules for Python. The files "installed" by pip install (to .../site-packages) I repackage as installp (AIX installp manager) packages. This works - but - requires root access (to execute installp) and I do not expect this will support anything like virtualenv. Further, sometimes a .egg-info file is created, sometimes not. And when it is created it does not always include an "AIX" tag. As example, I show some data from the modules I "pip built and installed" and then repackaged as installp: root@x066:[/home/root]lslpp -L | grep python3 | grep -v adt | sort   aixtools.python3.asn1crypto.rte   aixtools.python3.bcrypt.rte   aixtools.python3.cffi.rte   aixtools.python3.cryptography.rte   aixtools.python3.paramiko.rte   aixtools.python3.pycparser.rte   aixtools.python3.pynacl.rte   aixtools.python3.rte       3.7.4.0    C     F    python python3 13-Aug-2019   aixtools.python3.six.rte  1.12.0.0    C     F    tools six 26-Jul-2019 root@x066:[/home/root]find /opt/lib/python3.7 -name \*.egg\* /opt/lib/python3.7/site-packages/cffi-1.12.3-py3.7.egg-info /opt/lib/python3.7/site-packages/cryptography-2.7-py3.7-aix-6.1.egg /opt/lib/python3.7/site-packages/pycparser-2.19-py3.7.egg-info There are no .whl (except for pip and setuptools). I am starting to guess that getting a wheel built requires more than what most packages are doing. Further, I am sure cffi should be including an AIX platform tag - as it generates a .so file that depends on standard libraries from AIX (libc and libpthreads). I'll have read up on what is actually in the egg-info (using od -c I can read the file). Seems to be very close to what I find here root@x066:[/opt/lib/python3.7/site-packages/cryptography-2.7-py3.7-aix-6.1.egg/EGG-INFO]ls -l total 80 -rw-r--r--    1 bin      bin            4783 Jul 26 15:08 PKG-INFO -rw-r--r--    1 bin      bin           11759 Jul 26 15:08 SOURCES.txt -rw-r--r--    1 bin      bin               1 Jul 26 15:08 dependency_links.txt -rw-r--r--    1 bin      bin             144 Jul 26 15:08 native_libs.txt -rw-r--r--    1 bin      bin               1 Jul 26 15:08 not-zip-safe -rw-r--r--    1 bin      bin             381 Jul 26 15:08 requires.txt -rw-r--r--    1 bin      bin              46 Jul 26 15:08 top_level.txt ++++++ In short, I am just a user of pip and setuptools - but I would like to utilize them for packaging "binary" modules for AIX that do not require installp (or the alternate package manager - rpm). Some pointers into the documentation that is essential (I am starting at https://setuptools.readthedocs.io/en/latest/, but seems like quite the mountain!). Thanks (for remembering what it was like when you first started!), Michael