Build a wheel/egg and all dependencies for a python project

Question

In order to stage python project within our corporation I need to make an installable distribution.

This should include:

• An egg or whl for my project
• An egg or whl for every dependency of the project
• (optionally) produce a requirements.txt file listing all the installable components for this release

Is there an easy plug in, (e.g. an alternative to bdist_wheel) that will not only compile one wheel but also that project's components?

Obviously I can script this, but I was hoping that there might be a short-cut that builds the package + dependencies in fewer steps.

This needs to work on Python 2.7 on Windows + Linux.

Answer 1

With the latest pip and wheel, you can simply run

pip wheel . 

within your project folder, even if your application isn't on PyPi. All wheels will be stored in the current directory (.).

To change the output directory (to for example, ./wheels), you may use the -w / --wheel-dir option:

pip wheel . -w wheels 

All the options available are listed at the pip documentation.

Answer 2

You will need to create a setup.py file for your package. Make sure you have the latest setuptools and pip installed. Then run the following:

python setup.py bdist_wheel 

This will create a wheel file for your package. This assumes you don't have C/C++ headers, DLLs, etc. If you do, then you'll probably have a lot more work to do.

To get dependencies, you will want to create a requirements.txt file and run the following:

pip wheel -r requirements.txt 

If your package isn't on PyPI, then you'll have to manually copy your package's wheel file into the wheel folder that this command creates. For more information see the following excellent article:

• http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2014/1/27/python-on-wheels/