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Documentation

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Python wheels are great. Building them across Mac, Linux, Windows, on multiple versions of Python, is not.

cibuildwheel is here to help. cibuildwheel runs on your CI server - currently it supports GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, Travis CI, AppVeyor, CircleCI, and GitLab CI - and it builds and tests your wheels across all of your platforms.

What does it do?

While cibuildwheel itself requires a recent Python version to run (we support the last three releases), it can target the following versions to build wheels:

macOS IntelmacOS Apple SiliconWindows 64bitWindows 32bitWindows Arm64manylinux<br/>musllinux x86_64manylinux<br/>musllinux i686manylinux<br/>musllinux aarch64manylinux<br/>musllinux ppc64lemanylinux<br/>musllinux s390xmanylinux<br/>musllinux armv7lPyodide
CPython 3.6✅N/A✅✅N/A✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵N/A
CPython 3.7✅N/A✅✅N/A✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵N/A
CPython 3.8✅✅✅✅N/A✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵N/A
CPython 3.9✅✅✅✅✅²✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵N/A
CPython 3.10✅✅✅✅✅²✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵N/A
CPython 3.11✅✅✅✅✅²✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵N/A
CPython 3.12✅✅✅✅✅²✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵✅⁴
CPython 3.13³✅✅✅✅✅²✅✅✅✅✅✅⁵N/A
PyPy 3.7 v7.3✅N/A✅N/AN/A✅¹✅¹✅¹N/AN/AN/AN/A
PyPy 3.8 v7.3✅✅✅N/AN/A✅¹✅¹✅¹N/AN/AN/AN/A
PyPy 3.9 v7.3✅✅✅N/AN/A✅¹✅¹✅¹N/AN/AN/AN/A
PyPy 3.10 v7.3✅✅✅N/AN/A✅¹✅¹✅¹N/AN/AN/AN/A

<sup>¹ PyPy is only supported for manylinux wheels.</sup><br> <sup>² Windows arm64 support is experimental.</sup><br> <sup>³ Free-threaded mode requires opt-in using CIBW_ENABLE.</sup><br> <sup>⁴ Experimental, not yet supported on PyPI, but can be used directly in web deployment. Use --platform pyodide to build.</sup><br> <sup>⁵ manylinux armv7l support is experimental. As there are no RHEL based image for this architecture, it's using an Ubuntu based image instead.</sup><br>

See the cibuildwheel 1 documentation if you need to build unsupported versions of Python, such as Python 2.

Usage

cibuildwheel runs inside a CI service. Supported platforms depend on which service you're using:

LinuxmacOSWindowsLinux ARMmacOS ARMWindows ARM
GitHub Actions✅✅✅✅¹✅✅²
Azure Pipelines✅✅✅✅✅²
Travis CI✅✅✅
AppVeyor✅✅✅✅✅²
CircleCI✅✅✅✅
Gitlab CI✅✅✅✅¹✅
Cirrus CI✅✅✅✅✅

<sup>¹ Requires emulation, distributed separately. Other services may also support Linux ARM through emulation or third-party build hosts, but these are not tested in our CI.</sup><br> <sup>² Uses cross-compilation. It is not possible to test arm64 on this CI platform.</sup>

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Example setup

To build manylinux, musllinux, macOS, and Windows wheels on GitHub Actions, you could use this .github/workflows/wheels.yml:

name: Build

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  build_wheels:
    name: Build wheels on ${{ matrix.os }}
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        os: [ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, macos-13, macos-latest]

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      # Used to host cibuildwheel
      - uses: actions/setup-python@v5

      - name: Install cibuildwheel
        run: python -m pip install cibuildwheel==2.22.0

      - name: Build wheels
        run: python -m cibuildwheel --output-dir wheelhouse
        # to supply options, put them in 'env', like:
        # env:
        #   CIBW_SOME_OPTION: value

      - uses: actions/upload-artifact@v4
        with:
          name: cibw-wheels-${{ matrix.os }}-${{ strategy.job-index }}
          path: ./wheelhouse/*.whl

For more information, including PyPI deployment, and the use of other CI services or the dedicated GitHub Action, check out the documentation and the examples.

How it works

The following diagram summarises the steps that cibuildwheel takes on each platform.

<sup>Explore an interactive version of this diagram in the docs.</sup>

Options

OptionDescription
Build selectionCIBW_PLATFORMOverride the auto-detected target platform
CIBW_BUILD <br> CIBW_SKIPChoose the Python versions to build
CIBW_ARCHSChange the architectures built on your machine by default.
CIBW_PROJECT_REQUIRES_PYTHONManually set the Python compatibility of your project
CIBW_PRERELEASE_PYTHONSEnable building with pre-release versions of Python if available
Build customizationCIBW_BUILD_FRONTENDSet the tool to use to build, either "pip" (default for now) or "build"
CIBW_ENVIRONMENTSet environment variables needed during the build
CIBW_ENVIRONMENT_PASS_LINUXSet environment variables on the host to pass-through to the container during the build.
CIBW_BEFORE_ALLExecute a shell command on the build system before any wheels are built.
CIBW_BEFORE_BUILDExecute a shell command preparing each wheel's build
CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMANDExecute a shell command to repair each built wheel
CIBW_MANYLINUX_*_IMAGE<br/>CIBW_MUSLLINUX_*_IMAGESpecify alternative manylinux / musllinux Docker images
CIBW_CONTAINER_ENGINESpecify which container engine to use when building Linux wheels
CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONSSpecify how cibuildwheel controls the versions of the tools it uses
TestingCIBW_TEST_COMMANDExecute a shell command to test each built wheel
CIBW_BEFORE_TESTExecute a shell command before testing each wheel
CIBW_TEST_REQUIRESInstall Python dependencies before running the tests
CIBW_TEST_EXTRASInstall your wheel for testing using extras_require
CIBW_TEST_SKIPSkip running tests on some builds
OtherCIBW_BUILD_VERBOSITYIncrease/decrease the output of pip wheel

These options can be specified in a pyproject.toml file, as well; see configuration.

Working examples

Here are some repos that use cibuildwheel.

<!-- START bin/projects.py --> <!-- this section is generated by bin/projects.py. Don't edit it directly, instead, edit docs/data/projects.yml -->
NameCIOSNotes
scikit-learngithub iconwindows icon apple icon linux iconThe machine learning library. A complex but clean config using many of cibuildwheel's features to build a large project with Cython and C++ extensions.
pytorch-fairseqgithub iconapple icon linux iconFacebook AI Research Sequence-to-Sequence Toolkit written in Python.
NumPygithub icon travisci iconwindows icon apple icon linux iconThe fundamental package for scientific computing with Python.
duckdbgithub iconapple icon linux icon windows iconDuckDB is an analytical in-process SQL database management system
Tornadogithub iconlinux icon apple icon windows iconTornado is a Python web framework and asynchronous networking library. Uses stable ABI for a small C extension.
NCNNgithub iconwindows icon apple icon linux iconncnn is a high-performance neural network inference framework optimized for the mobile platform
Matplotlibgithub iconwindows icon apple icon linux iconThe venerable Matplotlib, a Python library with C++ portions
MyPygithub iconapple icon linux icon windows iconThe compiled version of MyPy using MyPyC.
Prophetgithub iconwindows icon apple icon linux iconTool for producing high quality forecasts for time series data that has multiple seasonality with linear or non-linear growth.
Kivygithub iconwindows icon apple icon linux iconOpen source UI framework written in Python, running on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS
<!-- END bin/projects.py -->

ℹ️ That's just a handful, there are many more! Check out the Working Examples page in the docs.

Legal note

Since cibuildwheel repairs the wheel with delocate or auditwheel, it might automatically bundle dynamically linked libraries from the build machine.

It helps ensure that the library can run without any dependencies outside of the pip toolchain.

This is similar to static linking, so it might have some license implications. Check the license for any code you're pulling in to make sure that's allowed.

Changelog

<!-- START bin/update_readme_changelog.py --> <!-- this section was generated by bin/update_readme_changelog.py -- do not edit manually -->

v2.22.0

23 November 2024

v2.21.3

9 October 2024

v2.21.2

2 October 2024

Note: the default manylinux image is scheduled to change from manylinux2014 to manylinux_2_28 in a cibuildwheel release on or after 6th May 2025 - you can set the value now to avoid getting upgraded if you want. (#1992)

v2.21.1

16 September 2024

v2.21.0

13 September 2024

<!-- END bin/update_readme_changelog.py -->

That's the last few versions.

ℹ️ Want more changelog? Head over to the changelog page in the docs.

Contributing

For more info on how to contribute to cibuildwheel, see the docs.

Everyone interacting with the cibuildwheel project via codebase, issue tracker, chat rooms, or otherwise is expected to follow the PSF Code of Conduct.

Maintainers

Credits

cibuildwheel stands on the shoulders of giants.

Massive props also to-

See also

Another very similar tool to consider is matthew-brett/multibuild. multibuild is a shell script toolbox for building a wheel on various platforms. It is used as a basis to build some of the big data science tools, like SciPy.

If you are building Rust wheels, you can get by without some of the tricks required to make GLIBC work via manylinux; this is especially relevant for cross-compiling, which is easy with Rust. See maturin-action for a tool that is optimized for building Rust wheels and cross-compiling.