Pythonwielen

Pythonwielen, a Dutch term often used for the Python wheel packaging format, refers to the built distributions that python packages can be distributed as and installed from. A wheel is a pre-compiled or pure-Python package in a ZIP-format file with the .whl extension. Wheels are designed to speed up installation by avoiding compilation steps during installation and to provide ready-to-use binaries when possible. They work with the pip installer and are commonly distributed via PyPI.

Wheels were introduced to replace the earlier eggs and were formalized under PEP 427 in 2012. The format defines how a distribution’s files and metadata are packaged, including a WHEEL file and a METADATA file. A wheel may contain platform-specific compiled artifacts or be pure Python. Each wheel carries compatibility tags that indicate the Python version, ABI, and operating system or platform, for example py3-none-any for pure Python, or win_amd64 and manylinux_X for platform-specific builds.

Creation and use: wheels are built with tools such as the wheel package or modern build backends (for example, python -m build or setup.py bdist_wheel). To install, users typically run pip install package, and if a matching wheel is available on PyPI, pip will install it directly. If no suitable wheel exists, pip may fall back to building from source or fail.

Impact and ecosystem: wheels simplify and accelerate package installation, particularly on systems lacking local compilers. They are widely used in the Python ecosystem, with PyPI serving as the primary distribution repository. While many packages publish platform-specific wheels, pure-Python wheels are universally compatible across platforms.