Python ports: should we use wheel files?

[Joshua Root]

Good summary from Rainer, which covers most of what I was going to say.

On 2018-4-1 12:53 , Rainer Müller wrote:
> I see two reasons why python modules need natively compiled binary files:
> 
> a) for performance
> b) they link against another library
> 
> In case of b), using pre-compiled binary files is out of the question,
> because we want to link to our own libraries and not against libraries
> in /usr/lib.

I'll just add that some extensions use libraries that do not ship with
the OS at all, which makes binary wheels impossible unless you either
statically link or just assume the user has the libs installed in some
preselected place (which will probably be /usr/local/lib).

The direction among packagers in general seems to be towards encouraging
upstream authors to make it easy (or at least possible) for others to
reproduce their build process. See <https://reproducible-builds.org/>.

- Josh