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Publish sdist for PyPI? #90
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Hi,
We're packaging a project that depends on cel-expr-python for Homebrew, which builds Python packages from source rather than installing prebuilt wheels. Currently PyPI has only wheels and no dist, so pip install can't build from source. For Homebrew, it is preferred to not use wheels if possible.
Would it be possible to publish an sdist to PyPI alongside the wheels? Thank you.
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dmitriplotnikov commentedon Jun 25, 2026
Thank you for reporting, @fanzeyi!
cel-expr-python build uses Bazel. While Bazel can produce artifacts that pip can consume (like wheels), pip install doesn't know how to delegate the build process to Bazel. Because of this, I am not sure it's feasible to publish a working sdist for cel-expr-python at this time.
Even if we could figure out some clever setup.py to delegate to bazel, installation is likely to fail for many users who don't have the Bazel environment set up, including a supported version of the C++ compiler, leading to a poor experience. PyPI users generally expect pip install to work without needing to install a separate large build system.