Hi, On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 4:26 AM, Michael A. via Wheel-builders <wheel-builders@python.org> wrote: > Ok it said newbie questions allowed. Im still in pretty basic syntax, just > trying what python is capable of doing for me. I come across wheel on the > help page and was wodering what all its capable of doing. I use 3.5 and seen > videos of stiĺl developing and thats còol considing everything is stiĺl > rather new. Does making wheels make .exe files for stand alone projects? Can > i make wheels and be able to send executable files to other people with > different operating systems? Is this like cx_Freeze I've seen used on > youtube? Give it to me in less Geek terms if possible on usage and how to > use it best for my scripts.
The wheel format is a zip file format that packages up everything you need to install a particular Python package on a particular operating system. For example, have a look at: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/Cython/0.25.2 You'll see there that the team responsible for the "Cython" package have built these zip archives for Windows 32- and 64-bit, OSX and for Intel Linux. The Python install tool "pip" knows how to unpack these zip files so that Python can 'import" these packages, as in (from the command line): pip install --user cython # fetches the correct wheel from the pypi site above Then: python >>> import cython # finds the files installed above So, short summary, the wheel is a binary format (in fact, a zip file with a particular layout) that "pip" can use to install Python packages. To answer your specific questions: * if your Python package doesn't have any compiled modules, yes you can make a wheel that will work for other operating systems, otherwise, no, you have to make a wheel for each operating system you support, usually by building the wheel on that operating system; * no, wheels aren't the right format to pack up a whole Python application with all its dependencies, wheels are specifically for containing individual packages (dependencies). Cheers, Matthew _______________________________________________ Wheel-builders mailing list Wheel-builders@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/wheel-builders
