Options summary¶

Setting options¶

cibuildwheel is configured using environment variables that can be set using your CI config.

For example, to configure cibuildwheel to run tests, add the following YAML to your CI config file:

env:
  CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES: pytest
  CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: "pytest {project}/tests"

variables:
  CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES: pytest
  CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: "pytest {project}/tests"

env:
  global:
    - CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES=pytest
    - CIBW_TEST_COMMAND="pytest {project}/tests"

environment:
  global:
    CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES: pytest
    CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: "pytest {project}\\tests"

jobs:
  job_name:
    environment:
      CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES: pytest
      CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: "pytest {project}/tests"

linux:
  variables:
    CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES: pytest
    CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: "pytest {project}/tests"

Build selection¶

CIBW_PLATFORM¶

Override the auto-detected target platform

Options: auto linux macos windows

Default: auto

auto will auto-detect platform using environment variables, such as TRAVIS_OS_NAME/APPVEYOR/CIRCLECI.

• For linux, you need Docker running, on macOS or Linux.
• For macos, you need a Mac machine. Note that cibuildwheel is going to install MacPython on your system, so you probably don't want to run this on your development machine.
• For windows, you need to run in Windows. cibuildwheel will install required versions of Python to C:\cibw\python using NuGet.

This option can also be set using the command-line option --platform.

export CIBW_BUILD='cp37-*'
export CIBW_TEST_COMMAND='pytest {package}/tests'
cibuildwheel --platform linux .

CIBW_BUILD, CIBW_SKIP¶

Choose the Python versions to build

Space-separated list of builds to build and skip. Each build has an identifier like cp27-manylinux_x86_64 or cp35-macosx_x86_64 - you can list specific ones to build and cibuildwheel will only build those, and/or list ones to skip and cibuildwheel won't try to build them.

When both options are specified, both conditions are applied and only builds with a tag that matches CIBW_BUILD and does not match CIBW_SKIP will be built.

When setting the options, you can use shell-style globbing syntax, as per fnmatch with the addition of curly bracket syntax {option1,option2}, provided by bracex. All the build identifiers supported by cibuildwheel are shown below:

The list of supported and currently selected build identifiers can also be retrieved by passing the --print-build-identifiers flag to cibuildwheel. The format is python_tag-platform_tag, with tags similar to those in PEP 425.

For CPython, the minimally supported macOS version is 10.9; for PyPy 2.7 and PyPy 3.6/3.7, respectively macOS 10.7 and 10.13 or higher is required.

Examples¶

# Only build on Python 3.6
CIBW_BUILD: cp36-*

# Skip building on Python 2.7 on the Mac
CIBW_SKIP: cp27-macosx_x86_64

# Skip building on Python 3.8 on the Mac
CIBW_SKIP: cp38-macosx_x86_64

# Skip building on Python 2.7 on all platforms
CIBW_SKIP: cp27-*

# Skip Python 2.7 on Windows
CIBW_SKIP: cp27-win*

# Skip Python 2.7 on 32-bit Windows
CIBW_SKIP: cp27-win32

# Skip Python 2.7 and Python 3.5
CIBW_SKIP: cp27-* cp35-*

# Skip Python 3.6 on Linux
CIBW_SKIP: cp36-manylinux*

# Only build on Python 3 (ready for 3.10 when it comes) and skip 32-bit builds
CIBW_BUILD: {cp,pp}3*-*
CIBW_SKIP: "*-win32 *-manylinux_i686"

# Only build PyPy and CPython 3
CIBW_BUILD: pp* cp3*-*

# Disable building PyPy wheels on all platforms
CIBW_SKIP: pp*

CIBW_ARCHS¶

Change the architectures built on your machine by default.

A space-separated list of architectures to build.

On macOS, this option can be used to cross-compile between x86_64, universal2 and arm64 for Apple Silicon support.

On Linux, this option can be used to build non-native architectures under emulation. See this guide for more information.

Options:

• Linux: x86_64 i686 aarch64 ppc64le s390x
• macOS: x86_64 arm64 universal2
• Windows: AMD64 x86
• auto: The default archs for your machine - see the table below.
  • auto64: Just the 64-bit auto archs
  • auto32: Just the 32-bit auto archs
• native: the native arch of the build machine - Matches platform.machine().
• all : expands to all the architectures supported on this OS. You may want to use CIBW_BUILD with this option to target specific architectures via build selectors.

Default: auto

If not listed above, auto is the same as native.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_ARCHS_MACOS | CIBW_ARCHS_WINDOWS | CIBW_ARCHS_LINUX

This option can also be set using the command-line option --archs.

Examples¶

# Build `universal2` and `arm64` wheels on an Intel runner.
# Note that the `arm64` wheel and the `arm64` part of the `universal2`
# wheel cannot be tested in this configuration.
CIBW_ARCHS_MACOS: "x86_64 universal2 arm64"

# On an Linux Intel runner with qemu installed, build Intel and ARM wheels
CIBW_ARCHS_LINUX: "auto aarch64"

CIBW_PROJECT_REQUIRES_PYTHON¶

Manually set the Python compatibility of your project

By default, cibuildwheel reads your package's Python compatibility from pyproject.toml following PEP621 or from setup.cfg; finally it will try to inspect the AST of setup.py for a simple keyword assignment in a top level function call. If you need to override this behaviour for some reason, you can use this option.

When setting this option, the syntax is the same as project.requires-python, using 'version specifiers' like >=3.6, according to PEP440.

Default: reads your package's Python compatibility from pyproject.toml (project.requires-python) or setup.cfg (options.python_requires) or setup.py setup(python_requires="..."). If not found, cibuildwheel assumes the package is compatible with all versions of Python that it can build.

[project]
requires-python = ">=3.6"

# Aside - in pyproject.toml you should always specify minimal build
# system options, like this:

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools>=42", "wheel"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

[options]
python_requires = ">=3.6"

Examples¶

CIBW_PROJECT_REQUIRES_PYTHON: ">=3.6"

Build customization¶

CIBW_ENVIRONMENT¶

Set environment variables needed during the build

A space-separated list of environment variables to set during the build. Bash syntax should be used, even on Windows.

You must set this variable to pass variables to Linux builds (since they execute in a Docker container). It also works for the other platforms.

You can use $PATH syntax to insert other variables, or the $(pwd) syntax to insert the output of other shell commands.

To specify more than one environment variable, separate the assignments by spaces.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_ENVIRONMENT_MACOS | CIBW_ENVIRONMENT_WINDOWS | CIBW_ENVIRONMENT_LINUX

Examples¶

# Set some compiler flags
CIBW_ENVIRONMENT: "CFLAGS='-g -Wall' CXXFLAGS='-Wall'"

# Append a directory to the PATH variable (this is expanded in the build environment)
CIBW_ENVIRONMENT: "PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin"

# Set BUILD_TIME to the output of the `date` command
CIBW_ENVIRONMENT: "BUILD_TIME=$(date)"

# Supply options to `pip` to affect how it downloads dependencies
CIBW_ENVIRONMENT: "PIP_EXTRA_INDEX_URL=https://pypi.myorg.com/simple"

# Set two flags
CIBW_ENVIRONMENT: "BUILD_TIME=$(date) SAMPLE_TEXT=\"sample text\""

CIBW_BEFORE_ALL¶

Execute a shell command on the build system before any wheels are built.

Shell command to prepare a common part of the project (e.g. build or install libraries which does not depend on the specific version of Python).

This option is very useful for the Linux build, where builds take place in isolated Docker containers managed by cibuildwheel. This command will run inside the container before the wheel builds start. Note, if you're building both x86_64 and i686 wheels (the default), your build uses two different Docker images. In that case, this command will execute twice - once per build container.

The placeholder {package} can be used here; it will be replaced by the path to the package being built by cibuildwheel.

On Windows and macOS, the version of Python available inside CIBW_BEFORE_ALL is whatever is available on the host machine. On Linux, a modern Python version is available on PATH.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_BEFORE_ALL_MACOS | CIBW_BEFORE_ALL_WINDOWS | CIBW_BEFORE_ALL_LINUX

Examples¶

# build third party library
CIBW_BEFORE_ALL: make -C third_party_lib

# install system library
CIBW_BEFORE_ALL_LINUX: yum install -y libffi-dev

Note that manylinux2_24 builds occur inside a Debian9 docker, where manylinux2010 and manylinux2014 builds occur inside a CentOS one. So for manylinux2_24 the CIBW_BEFORE_ALL_LINUX command must use apt-get -y instead.

CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD¶

Execute a shell command preparing each wheel's build

A shell command to run before building the wheel. This option allows you to run a command in each Python environment before the pip wheel command. This is useful if you need to set up some dependency so it's available during the build.

If dependencies are required to build your wheel (for example if you include a header from a Python module), instead of using this command, we recommend adding requirements to a pyproject.toml file. This is reproducible, and users who do not get your wheels (such as Alpine or ClearLinux users) will still benefit.

The active Python binary can be accessed using python, and pip with pip; cibuildwheel makes sure the right version of Python and pip will be executed. The placeholder {package} can be used here; it will be replaced by the path to the package being built by cibuildwheel.

The command is run in a shell, so you can write things like cmd1 && cmd2.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD_MACOS | CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD_WINDOWS | CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD_LINUX

Examples¶

# install something required for the build (you might want to use pyproject.toml instead)
CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD: pip install pybind11

# chain commands using &&
CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD_LINUX: yum install -y libffi-dev && make clean

# run a script that's inside your project
CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD: bash scripts/prepare_for_build.sh

# if cibuildwheel is called with a package_dir argument, it's available as {package}
CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD: "{package}/script/prepare_for_build.sh"

[build-system]
requires = [
    "setuptools>=42",
    "wheel",
    "Cython",
    "numpy==1.13.3; python_version<'3.5'",
    "oldest-supported-numpy; python_version>='3.5'",
]

build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND¶

Execute a shell command to repair each (non-pure Python) built wheel

Default:

• on Linux: 'auditwheel repair -w {dest_dir} {wheel}'
• on macOS: 'delocate-listdeps {wheel} && delocate-wheel --require-archs {delocate_archs} -w {dest_dir} {wheel}'
• on Windows: ''

A shell command to repair a built wheel by copying external library dependencies into the wheel tree and relinking them. The command is run on each built wheel (except for pure Python ones) before testing it.

The following placeholders must be used inside the command and will be replaced by cibuildwheel:

• {wheel} for the absolute path to the built wheel
• {dest_dir} for the absolute path of the directory where to create the repaired wheel
• {delocate_archs} (macOS only) comma-separated list of architectures in the wheel.

The command is run in a shell, so you can run multiple commands like cmd1 && cmd2.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_MACOS | CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_WINDOWS | CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_LINUX

Examples¶

# use delvewheel on windows (only works on Python 3.6+)
CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD_WINDOWS: "pip install delvewheel"
CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_WINDOWS: "delvewheel repair -w {dest_dir} {wheel}"

# don't repair macOS wheels
CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_MACOS: ""

# pass the `--lib-sdir .` flag to auditwheel on Linux
CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_LINUX: "auditwheel repair --lib-sdir . -w {dest_dir} {wheel}"

CIBW_MANYLINUX_*_IMAGE¶

Specify alternative manylinux Docker images

The available options are:

• CIBW_MANYLINUX_X86_64_IMAGE
• CIBW_MANYLINUX_I686_IMAGE
• CIBW_MANYLINUX_PYPY_X86_64_IMAGE
• CIBW_MANYLINUX_AARCH64_IMAGE
• CIBW_MANYLINUX_PPC64LE_IMAGE
• CIBW_MANYLINUX_S390X_IMAGE

Set an alternative Docker image to be used for building manylinux wheels. cibuildwheel will then pull these instead of the default images, quay.io/pypa/manylinux2010_x86_64, quay.io/pypa/manylinux2010_i686, pypywheels/manylinux2010-pypy_x86_64, quay.io/pypa/manylinux2014_aarch64, quay.io/pypa/manylinux2014_ppc64le, and quay.io/pypa/manylinux2014_s390x.

The value of this option can either be set to manylinux1, manylinux2010, manylinux2014 or manylinux_2_24 to use a pinned version of the official manylinux images and PyPy manylinux images. Alternatively, set these options to any other valid Docker image name. For PyPy, only the official manylinux2010 image is currently available. For architectures other than x86 (x86_64 and i686) manylinux2014 or manylinux_2_24 must be used, because the first version of the manylinux specification that supports additional architectures is manylinux2014.

Note that manylinux2014/manylinux_2_24 don't support builds with Python 2.7 - when building with manylinux2014/manylinux_2_24, skip Python 2.7 using CIBW_SKIP (see example below).

If setting a custom Docker image, you'll need to make sure it can be used in the same way as the official, default Docker images: all necessary Python and pip versions need to be present in /opt/python/, and the auditwheel tool needs to be present for cibuildwheel to work. Apart from that, the architecture and relevant shared system libraries need to be compatible to the relevant standard to produce valid manylinux1/manylinux2010/manylinux2014/manylinux_2_24 wheels (see pypa/manylinux on GitHub, PEP 513, PEP 571, PEP 599 and PEP 600 for more details).

Auditwheel detects the version of the manylinux standard in the Docker image through the AUDITWHEEL_PLAT environment variable, as cibuildwheel has no way of detecting the correct --plat command line argument to pass to auditwheel for a custom image. If a Docker image does not correctly set this AUDITWHEEL_PLAT environment variable, the CIBW_ENVIRONMENT option can be used to do so (e.g., CIBW_ENVIRONMENT='AUDITWHEEL_PLAT="manylinux2010_$(uname -m)"').

Examples¶

# build using the manylinux1 image to ensure manylinux1 wheels are produced
# skip PyPy, since there is no PyPy manylinux1 image
CIBW_MANYLINUX_X86_64_IMAGE: manylinux1
CIBW_MANYLINUX_I686_IMAGE: manylinux1
CIBW_SKIP: pp*

# build using the manylinux2014 image
CIBW_MANYLINUX_X86_64_IMAGE: manylinux2014
CIBW_MANYLINUX_I686_IMAGE: manylinux2014
CIBW_SKIP: cp27-manylinux*

# build using the latest manylinux2010 release, instead of the cibuildwheel
# pinned version
CIBW_MANYLINUX_X86_64_IMAGE: quay.io/pypa/manylinux2010_x86_64:latest
CIBW_MANYLINUX_I686_IMAGE: quay.io/pypa/manylinux2010_i686:latest

# build using a different image from the docker registry
CIBW_MANYLINUX_X86_64_IMAGE: dockcross/manylinux-x64
CIBW_MANYLINUX_I686_IMAGE: dockcross/manylinux-x86

CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS¶

Specify how cibuildwheel controls the versions of the tools it uses

Options: pinned latest <your constraints file>

Default: pinned

If CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS is pinned, cibuildwheel uses versions of tools like pip, setuptools, virtualenv that were pinned with that release of cibuildwheel. This represents a known-good set of dependencies, and is recommended for build repeatability.

If set to latest, cibuildwheel will use the latest of these packages that are available on PyPI. This might be preferable if these packages have bug fixes that can't wait for a new cibuildwheel release.

To control the versions of dependencies yourself, you can supply a pip constraints file here and it will be used instead.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS_MACOS | CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS_WINDOWS

Examples¶

# use tools versions that are bundled with cibuildwheel (this is the default)
CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS: pinned

# use the latest versions available on PyPI
CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS: latest

# use your own pip constraints file
CIBW_DEPENDENCY_VERSIONS: ./constraints.txt

Testing¶

CIBW_TEST_COMMAND¶

Execute a shell command to test each built wheel

Shell command to run tests after the build. The wheel will be installed automatically and available for import from the tests. To ensure the wheel is imported by your tests (instead of your source copy), tests are not run from your project directory. Use the placeholders {project} and {package} when specifying paths in your project. If this variable is not set, your wheel will not be installed after building.

• {project} is an absolute path to the project root - the working directory where cibuildwheel was called.
• {package} is the path to the package being built - the package_dir argument supplied to cibuildwheel on the command line.

The command is run in a shell, so you can write things like cmd1 && cmd2.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_TEST_COMMAND_MACOS | CIBW_TEST_COMMAND_WINDOWS | CIBW_TEST_COMMAND_LINUX

Examples¶

# run the project tests against the installed wheel using `nose`
CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: nosetests {project}/tests

# run the package tests using `pytest`
CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: pytest {package}/tests

# trigger an install of the package, but run nothing of note
CIBW_TEST_COMMAND: "echo Wheel installed"

CIBW_BEFORE_TEST¶

Execute a shell command before testing each wheel

A shell command to run in each test virtual environment, before your wheel is installed and tested. This is useful if you need to install a non-pip package, invoke pip with different environment variables, or perform a multi-step pip installation (e.g. installing scikit-build or Cython before installing test package).

The active Python binary can be accessed using python, and pip with pip; cibuildwheel makes sure the right version of Python and pip will be executed. The placeholder {package} can be used here; it will be replaced by the path to the package being built by cibuildwheel.

The command is run in a shell, so you can write things like cmd1 && cmd2.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_BEFORE_TEST_MACOS | CIBW_BEFORE_TEST_WINDOWS | CIBW_BEFORE_TEST_LINUX

Examples¶

# install test dependencies with overwritten environment variables.
CIBW_BEFORE_TEST: CC=gcc CXX=g++ pip install -r requirements.txt

# chain commands using &&
CIBW_BEFORE_TEST: rm -rf ./data/cache && mkdir -p ./data/cache

# install non pip python package
CIBW_BEFORE_TEST: cd some_dir; ./configure; make; make install

# install python packages that are required to install test dependencies
CIBW_BEFORE_TEST: pip install cmake scikit-build

CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES¶

Install Python dependencies before running the tests

Space-separated list of dependencies required for running the tests.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES_MACOS | CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES_WINDOWS | CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES_LINUX

Examples¶

# install pytest before running CIBW_TEST_COMMAND
CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES: pytest

# install specific versions of test dependencies
CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES: nose==1.3.7 moto==0.4.31

CIBW_TEST_EXTRAS¶

Install your wheel for testing using extras_require

Comma-separated list of extras_require options that should be included when installing the wheel prior to running the tests. This can be used to avoid having to redefine test dependencies in CIBW_TEST_REQUIRES if they are already defined in setup.py or setup.cfg.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_TEST_EXTRAS_MACOS | CIBW_TEST_EXTRAS_WINDOWS | CIBW_TEST_EXTRAS_LINUX

Examples¶

# will cause the wheel to be installed with `pip install <wheel_file>[test,qt]`
CIBW_TEST_EXTRAS: test,qt

CIBW_TEST_SKIP¶

Skip running tests on some builds

This will skip testing on any identifiers that match the given skip patterns (see CIBW_SKIP). This can be used to mask out tests for wheels that have missing dependencies upstream that are slow or hard to build, or to skip slow tests on emulated architectures.

With macOS universal2 wheels, you can also skip the the individual archs inside the wheel using an :arch suffix. For example, cp39-macosx_universal2:x86_64 or cp39-macosx_universal2:arm64.

Examples¶

# Will avoid testing on emulated architectures
CIBW_TEST_SKIP: "*-manylinux_{aarch64,ppc64le,s390x}"

# Skip trying to test arm64 builds on Intel Macs
CIBW_TEST_SKIP: "*-macosx_arm64 *-macosx_universal2:arm64"

Other¶

CIBW_BUILD_VERBOSITY¶

Increase/decrease the output of pip wheel

An number from 1 to 3 to increase the level of verbosity (corresponding to invoking pip with -v, -vv, and -vvv), between -1 and -3 (-q, -qq, and -qqq), or just 0 (default verbosity). These flags are useful while debugging a build when the output of the actual build invoked by pip wheel is required.

Platform-specific variants also available:
CIBW_BUILD_VERBOSITY_MACOS | CIBW_BUILD_VERBOSITY_WINDOWS | CIBW_BUILD_VERBOSITY_LINUX

Examples¶

# increase pip debugging output
CIBW_BUILD_VERBOSITY: 1

Command line options¶

usage: cibuildwheel [-h] [--platform {auto,linux,macos,windows}]
                    [--archs ARCHS] [--output-dir OUTPUT_DIR]
                    [--print-build-identifiers] [--allow-empty]
                    [package_dir]

Build wheels for all the platforms.

positional arguments:
  package_dir           Path to the package that you want wheels for. Must be
                        a subdirectory of the working directory. When set, the
                        working directory is still considered the 'project'
                        and is copied into the Docker container on Linux.
                        Default: the working directory.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --platform {auto,linux,macos,windows}
                        Platform to build for. For "linux" you need docker
                        running, on Mac or Linux. For "macos", you need a Mac
                        machine, and note that this script is going to
                        automatically install MacPython on your system, so
                        don't run on your development machine. For "windows",
                        you need to run in Windows, and it will build and test
                        for all versions of Python. Default: auto.
  --archs ARCHS         Comma-separated list of CPU architectures to build
                        for. When set to 'auto', builds the architectures
                        natively supported on this machine. Set this option to
                        build an architecture via emulation, for example,
                        using binfmt_misc and QEMU. Default: auto. Choices:
                        auto, native, all, x86_64, i686, aarch64, ppc64le,
                        s390x, x86, AMD64
  --output-dir OUTPUT_DIR
                        Destination folder for the wheels.
  --print-build-identifiers
                        Print the build identifiers matched by the current
                        invocation and exit.
  --allow-empty         Do not report an error code if the build does not
                        match any wheels.