Understanding Python Package Distribution Types
What are Wheels, Eggs, and Source Distributions?
If you’ve done much Python development you’re probably familiar with importing dependencies using pip, or even easy_install, if you’ve been at this for awhile. Whether you were aware of it or not, these dependencies likely came from the public Python Package Index (PyPI) or perhaps an internal mirror of the PyPi repository that is hosted by your company.
What you may not have been aware of is how these dependencies are actually packaged, delivered, and installed, and the differences between the different distribution types available for Python.
The Primary Distribution Types
There are two primary distribution types in use today, Built Distributions and Source Distributions.
Python Source Distributions
Python source distributions are the simpler of the two. A source distribution, or more commonly sdist, is a distribution that contains all of the python source code (i.e. .py files), any data files that the library requires, and a setup.py file which describes to the setuptools module how your python code should be packaged.
