[Distutils] Importable wheels using distlib/distil

[Paul Moore]

On 27 March 2013 21:06, Jim Fulton <jim at zope.com> wrote:
>> - AFAIK eggs allow you to import extensions
>> from zip in a similar fashion.
>
> Importing from zipped eggs has proved itself to be an
> anti pattern.

I don't like the idea of making wheels work like eggs in this respect.
As Jim said, (zipped) eggs have a very bad reputation and associating
wheels with that type of functionality would be a very bad idea.

Wheels are, and should remain, a binary installer format.

On the other hand, zipimport is a very cool feature, and seriously
under-used. But it has specific benefits and limitations, and in
particular zipimport does not support binary extensions for very good
reasons. Zip files on sys.path are practical for pure Python code
only, IMO.

Having said all that, the fact that wheels are zipfiles, and can be
used on sys.path, *can* be useful. But it's an incidental benefit and
*not* a core feature.

Paul.