[Python-ideas] Wheels For ...

[Sven R. Kunze]

Hi folks,

currently, I came across http://pythonwheels.com/ during researching how 
to make a proper Python distribution for PyPI. I thought it would be 
great idea to tell other maintainers to upload their content as wheels 
so I approached a couple of them. Some of them already provided wheels.

Happy being able to have built my own distribution, I discussed the 
issue at hand with some people and I would like to share my findings and 
propose some ideas:

1) documentation is weirdly split up/distributed and references old material
2) once up and running (setup.cfg, setup.py etc. etc.) it works but 
everybody needs to do it on their own
3) more than one way to do (upload, wheel, source/binary etc.) it (sigh)
4) making contact to propose wheels on github or per email is easy 
otherwise almost impossible or very tedious
5) reactions went evenly split from "none", "yes", "when ready" to "nope"

None: well, okay
yes: that's good
when ready: well, okay
nope: what a pity for wheels; example: 
https://github.com/simplejson/simplejson/issues/122

I personally find the situation not satisfying. Someone proposes the 
following solution in form of a question:

Why do developers need to build their distribution themselves?

I had not real answer to him, but pondering a while over it, I found it 
really insightful. Viewing this from a different angle, packaging your 
own distribution is actually a waste of time. It is a tedious, 
error-prone task involving no creativity whatsoever. Developers on the 
other hand are actually people with very little time and a lot of 
creativity at hand which should spend better. The logical conclusion 
would be that PyPI should build wheels for the developers for every 
python/platform combination necessary.


With this post, I would like raise awareness of the people in charge of 
the Python infrastructure.


Best,
Sven