wheel

wheel is the reference implementation of the PEP 427 binary distribution format for Python. It ships a command-line tool for inspecting and manipulating .whl files.

Installation and Setup

Install it from the Python Package Index into a virtual environment:

Windows PowerShell 
PS> py -m pip install wheel
Shell 
$ python -m pip install wheel

Key Features

  • Implements the Wheel standard (PEP 427) used by installers like pip.
  • Unpacks wheels while verifying hashes and file sizes against the RECORD file with wheel unpack.
  • Repacks modified wheels and regenerates RECORD with wheel pack.
  • Converts legacy .egg archives and Windows bdist_wininst installers into wheels with wheel convert.

Usage

Unpack a wheel into a directory and verify it against RECORD:

Shell 
$ wheel unpack dist/pkg-1.2.3-py3-none-any.whl

Repack an unpacked wheel and set a new build number:

Shell 
$ wheel pack --build-number 2 pkg-1.2.3

Convert a legacy .egg or Windows installer into a wheel:

Shell 
$ wheel convert dist/pkg-1.2.3-py3.11.egg