Besides the valid (IMO) points that others raised already, wheels on PyPI have other advantages. Currently, I need to have gcc / libxml2-devel and libxslt-devel available on my system in order to be able to "pip install lxml". While I can fix that on my workstation, it's rather annoying other environments (including CI). Since external dependencies can't be handled by pip/setuptools, I'm left to whatever the system has to offer. On Fedora, I need to use yum and openSUSE has zypper. However, if lxml wheels would be published, pip would prefer those and skip the compilation altogether, hence avoiding the need for gcc & co.
And "pip install ..." becomes much faster. This is a valid concern if you run it several thousand times a day (ok, CI again).
Besides the valid (IMO) points that others raised already, wheels on PyPI have other advantages. Currently, I need to have gcc / libxml2-devel and libxslt-devel available on my system in order to be able to "pip install lxml". While I can fix that on my workstation, it's rather annoying other environments (including CI). Since external dependencies can't be handled by pip/setuptools, I'm left to whatever the system has to offer. On Fedora, I need to use yum and openSUSE has zypper. However, if lxml wheels would be published, pip would prefer those and skip the compilation altogether, hence avoiding the need for gcc & co.
And "pip install ..." becomes much faster. This is a valid concern if you run it several thousand times a day (ok, CI again).