Tips and tricks¶

Tips¶

Linux builds in containers¶

Linux wheels are built in manylinux/musllinux containers to provide binary compatible wheels on Linux, according to PEP 600 / PEP 656. Because of this, when building with cibuildwheel on Linux, a few things should be taken into account:

• Programs and libraries are not installed on the CI runner host, but rather should be installed inside the container - using yum for manylinux2010 or manylinux2014, apt-get for manylinux_2_24 and apk for musllinux_1_1, or manually. The same goes for environment variables that are potentially needed to customize the wheel building.

  cibuildwheel supports this by providing the CIBW_ENVIRONMENT and CIBW_BEFORE_ALL options to setup the build environment inside the running container.

• The project directory is copied into the container as /project, the output directory for the wheels to be copied out is /output. In general, this is handled transparently by cibuildwheel. For a more finegrained level of control however, the root of the host file system is mounted as /host, allowing for example to access shared files, caches, etc. on the host file system. Note that /host is not available on CircleCI and GitLab CI due to their Docker policies.

• Alternative Docker images can be specified with the CIBW_MANYLINUX_*_IMAGE/CIBW_MUSLLINUX_*_IMAGE options to allow for a custom, preconfigured build environment for the Linux builds. See options for more details.

Building macOS wheels for Apple Silicon¶

cibuildwheel supports both native builds and cross-compiling between arm64 (Apple Silicon) and x86_64 (Intel) architectures, including the cross-compatible universal2 format.

Overview of Mac architectures¶

You have several choices for wheels for Python 3.8+:

x86_64¶

The traditional wheel for Apple, loads on Intel machines, and on Apple Silicon when running Python under Rosetta 2 emulation.

Due to a change in naming, Pip 20.3+ (or an installer using packaging 20.5+) is required to install a binary wheel on macOS Big Sur.

arm64¶

The native wheel for macOS on Apple Silicon.

Requires Pip 20.3+ (or packaging 20.5+) to install.

universal2¶

This wheel contains both architectures, causing it to be up to twice the size (data files do not get doubled, only compiled code). It requires Pip 20.3 (Packaging 20.6+) to load on Intel, and Pip 21.0.1 (Packaging 20.9+) to load on Apple Silicon.

The dual-architecture universal2 has a few benefits, but a key benefit to a universal wheel is that a user can bundle these wheels into an application and ship a single binary.

However, if you have a large library, then you might prefer to ship the two single-arch wheels instead - x86_64 and arm64. In rare cases, you might want to build all three, but in that case, pip will not download the universal wheels, because it prefers the most specific wheel available.

What to provide?¶

Generally speaking, because Pip 20.3 is required for the universal2 wheel, most packages should provide both x86_64 and one of universal2/arm64 wheels. When Pip 20.3+ is common on macOS, then it might be possible to ship only the universal2 wheel.

Opinions vary on which of arch-specific or universal2 wheels are best - some packagers prefer universal2 because it's one wheel for all Mac users, so simpler, and easier to build into apps for downstream users. However, because they contain code for both architectures, their file size is larger, meaning they consume more disk space and bandwidth, and are harder to build for some projects.

See GitHub issue 1333 for more discussion.

How?¶

It's easiest to build x86_64 wheels on x86_64 runners, and arm64 wheels on arm64 runners.

On GitHub Actions, macos-14 runners are arm64, and macos-13 runners are x86_64. So all you need to do is ensure both are in your build matrix.

Cross-compiling¶

If your CI provider doesn't offer arm64 runners yet, or you want to create universal2, you'll have to cross-compile. Cross-compilation can be enabled by adding extra archs to the CIBW_ARCHS_MACOS option - e.g. CIBW_ARCHS_MACOS="x86_64 universal2". Cross-compilation is provided by Xcode toolchain v12.2+.

Regarding testing,

• On an arm64 runner, it is possible to test x86_64 wheels and both parts of a universal2 wheel using Rosetta 2 emulation.
• On an x86_64 runner, arm64 code can be compiled but it can't be tested. cibuildwheel will raise a warning to notify you of this - these warnings can be silenced by skipping testing on these platforms: CIBW_TEST_SKIP: "*_arm64 *_universal2:arm64".

Building Linux wheels for non-native archs using emulation¶

cibuildwheel supports building non-native architectures on Linux, via emulation through the binfmt_misc kernel feature. The easiest way to use this is via the docker/setup-qemu-action on GitHub Actions or tonistiigi/binfmt.

Check out the following config for an example of how to set it up on GitHub Actions. Once QEMU is set up and registered, you just need to set the CIBW_ARCHS_LINUX environment variable (or use the --archs option on Linux), and the other architectures are emulated automatically.

.github/workflows/build.yml

name: Build

on: [push, pull_request]

jobs:
  build_wheels:
    name: Build wheels on ${{ matrix.os }}
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        # macos-13 is an intel runner, macos-14 is apple silicon
        os: [ubuntu-latest, windows-latest, macos-13, macos-14]

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Set up QEMU
        if: runner.os == 'Linux'
        uses: docker/setup-qemu-action@v3
        with:
          platforms: all

      - name: Build wheels
        uses: pypa/cibuildwheel@v2.17.0
        env:
          # configure cibuildwheel to build native archs ('auto'), and some
          # emulated ones
          CIBW_ARCHS_LINUX: auto aarch64 ppc64le s390x

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

Building CPython ABI3 wheels (Limited API)¶

The CPython Limited API is a subset of the Python C Extension API that's declared to be forward-compatible, meaning you can compile wheels for one version of Python, and they'll be compatible with future versions. Wheels that use the Limited API are known as ABI3 wheels.

To create a package that builds ABI3 wheels, you'll need to configure your build backend to compile libraries correctly create wheels with the right tags. Check this repo for an example of how to do this with setuptools.

You could also consider running abi3audit against the produced wheels in order to check for abi3 violations or inconsistencies. You can run it alongside the default in your CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND.

Packages with optional C extensions¶

cibuildwheel defines the environment variable CIBUILDWHEEL to the value 1 allowing projects for which the C extension is optional to make it mandatory when building wheels.

An easy way to do it in Python 3 is through the optional named argument of Extension constructor in your setup.py:

myextension = Extension(
    "myextension",
    ["myextension.c"],
    optional=os.environ.get('CIBUILDWHEEL', '0') != '1',
)

Automatic updates using Dependabot¶

Selecting a moving target (like the latest release) is generally a bad idea in CI. If something breaks, you can't tell whether it was your code or an upstream update that caused the breakage, and in a worse-case scenario, it could occur during a release.

There are two suggested methods for keeping cibuildwheel up to date that instead involve scheduled pull requests using GitHub's Dependabot.

Option 1: GitHub Action¶

If you use GitHub Actions for builds, you can use cibuildwheel as an action:

uses: pypa/cibuildwheel@v2.17.0

This is a composite step that just runs cibuildwheel using pipx. You can set command-line options as with: parameters, and use env: as normal.

Then, your .github/dependabot.yml file could look like this:

version: 2
updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "github-actions"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "weekly"

Option 2: Requirement files¶

The second option, and the only one that supports other CI systems, is using a requirements-*.txt file. The file should have a distinct name and have only one entry:

# requirements-cibw.txt
cibuildwheel==2.17.0

Then your install step would have python -m pip install -r requirements-cibw.txt in it. Your .github/dependabot.yml file could look like this:

version: 2
updates:
  - package-ecosystem: "pip"
    directory: "/"
    schedule:
      interval: "daily"

This will also try to update other pins in all requirement files, so be sure you want to do that. The only control you have over the files used is via the directory option.

Alternatives to cibuildwheel options¶

cibuildwheel provides lots of opportunities to configure the build environment. However, you might consider adding this build configuration into the package itself - in general, this is preferred, because users of your package 'sdist' will also benefit.

Missing build dependencies¶

If your build needs Python dependencies, rather than using CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD, it's best to add these to the build-system.requires section of your pyproject.toml. For example, if your project requires Cython to build, your pyproject.toml might include a section like this:

[build-system]
requires = [
    "setuptools>=42",
    "Cython",
]

build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

Actions you need to perform before building¶

You might need to run some other commands before building, like running a script that performs codegen or downloading some data that's not stored in your source tree.

Rather than using CIBW_BEFORE_ALL or CIBW_BEFORE_BUILD, you could incorporate these steps into your package's build process. For example, if you're using setuptools, you can add steps to your package's setup.py using a structure like this:

import subprocess
import setuptools
import setuptools.command.build_py


class BuildPyCommand(setuptools.command.build_py.build_py):
    """Custom build command."""

    def run(self):
        # your custom build steps here
        # e.g.
        #   subprocess.run(['python', 'scripts/my_custom_script.py'], check=True)
        setuptools.command.build_py.build_py.run(self)


setuptools.setup(
    cmdclass={
        'build_py': BuildPyCommand,
    },
    # Usual setup() args.
    # ...
)

Compiler flags¶

Your build might need some compiler flags to be set through environment variables. Consider incorporating these into your package, for example, in setup.py using extra_compile_args or extra_link_args.

Python 2.7 / PyPy2 wheels¶

See the cibuildwheel version 1 docs for information about building Python 2.7 or PyPy2 wheels. There are lots of tricks and workaround there that are no longer required for Python 3 in cibuildwheel 2.

Troubleshooting¶

If your wheel didn't compile, you might have a mistake in your config.

To quickly test your config without doing a git push and waiting for your code to build on CI, you can test the Linux build in a local Docker container.

Missing dependencies¶

Sometimes a build will fail due to a missing dependency.

If the build is missing a Python package, you should add it to pyproject.toml.

If you need a build tool (e.g. cmake, automake, ninja), you can install it through a package manager like apt/yum, brew or choco, using the CIBW_BEFORE_ALL option.

If your build is linking into a native library dependency, you can build/install that in CIBW_BEFORE_ALL. However, on Linux, Mac (and Windows if you're using delvewheel), the library that you install will be bundled into the wheel in the repair step. So take care to ensure that

• the bundled library doesn't accidentally increase the minimum system requirements (such as the minimum macOS version)
• the bundled library matches the architecture of the wheel you're building when cross-compiling

This is particularly an issue on macOS, where de facto package manager Homebrew will install libraries that are compiled for the specific version of macOS that the build machine is running, rendering the wheels useless for any previous version. And brew will not install the right arch for cross compilation of Apple Silicon wheels.

For these reasons, it's strongly recommended to not use brew for native library dependencies. Instead, we recommend compiling the library yourself. If you compile in the CIBW_BEFORE_ALL step, cibuildwheel will have already set the appropriate MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET env var, so the library will target the correct version of macOS.

macOS: ModuleNotFoundError¶

Calling cibuildwheel from a python3 script and getting a ModuleNotFoundError? Due to a (fixed) bug in CPython, you'll need to unset the __PYVENV_LAUNCHER__ variable before activating a venv.

macOS: 'No module named XYZ' errors after running cibuildwheel¶

cibuildwheel on Mac installs the distributions from Python.org system-wide during its operation. This is necessary, but it can cause some confusing errors after cibuildwheel has finished.

Consider the build script:

python3 -m pip install twine cibuildwheel
python3 -m cibuildwheel --output-dir wheelhouse
python3 -m twine upload wheelhouse/*.whl
# error: no module named 'twine'

This doesn't work because while cibuildwheel was running, it installed a few new versions of 'python3', so the python3 run on line 3 isn't the same as the python3 that ran on line 1.

Solutions to this vary, but the simplest is to use pipx:

# most runners have pipx preinstalled, but in case you don't
python3 -m pip install pipx

pipx run cibuildwheel==2.17.0 --output-dir wheelhouse
pipx run twine upload wheelhouse/*.whl

macOS: Passing DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to delocate¶

macOS has built-in System Integrity protections which limits the use of DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH so that it does not automatically pass to children processes. This means if you set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH before running cibuildwheel, or even set it in CIBW_ENVIRONMENT, it will be stripped out of the environment before delocate is called.

To work around this, use a different environment variable such as REPAIR_LIBRARY_PATH to store the library path, and set DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH in CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_MACOS, like this:

CIBW_REPAIR_WHEEL_COMMAND_MACOS: >
    DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$REPAIR_LIBRARY_PATH delocate-wheel --require-archs {delocate_archs} -w {dest_dir} -v {wheel}

[tool.cibuildwheel.macos]
repair-wheel-command = """\
DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$REPAIR_LIBRARY_PATH delocate-wheel \
--require-archs {delocate_archs} -w {dest_dir} -v {wheel}\
"""

See #816, thanks to @phoerious for reporting.

macOS: Building CPython 3.8 wheels on arm64¶

If you're building on an arm64 runner, you might notice something strange about CPython 3.8 - unlike Python 3.9+, it's cross-compiled to arm64 from an x86_64 version of Python running under Rosetta emulation. This is because (despite the prevalence of arm64 versions of Python 3.8 from Apple and Homebrew) there is no officially supported Python.org installer of Python 3.8 for arm64.

This is fine for simple C extensions, but for more complicated builds on arm64 it becomes an issue.

So, if the cross-compilation is an issue for you, there is an 'experimental' installer available that's built natively for arm64.

To use this installer and perform native CPython 3.8 building, before invoking cibuildwheel, install the universal2 version of Python on your arm64 runner, something like:

curl -o /tmp/Python38.pkg https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.8.10/python-3.8.10-macos11.pkg
sudo installer -pkg /tmp/Python38.pkg -target /
sh "/Applications/Python 3.8/Install Certificates.command"

Then cibuildwheel will detect that it's installed and use it instead. However, you probably don't want to build x86_64 wheels on this Python, unless you're happy with them only supporting macOS 11+.

Windows: 'ImportError: DLL load failed: The specific module could not be found'¶

Visual Studio and MSVC link the compiled binary wheels to the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime. Normally, the C parts of the runtime are included with Python, but the C++ components are not. When compiling modules using C++, it is possible users will run into problems on systems that do not have the full set of runtime libraries installed. The solution is to ask users to download the corresponding Visual C++ Redistributable from the Microsoft website and install it.

Additionally, Visual Studio 2019 started linking to an even newer DLL, VCRUNTIME140_1.dll, besides the VCRUNTIME140.dll that is included with recent Python versions (starting from Python 3.5; see here for more details on the corresponding Visual Studio & MSVC versions used to compile the different Python versions). To avoid this extra dependency on VCRUNTIME140_1.dll, the /d2FH4- flag can be added to the MSVC invocations (check out this issue for details and references). CPython 3.8.3 and all versions after it have this extra DLL, so it is only needed for 3.8 and earlier.

To add the /d2FH4- flag to a standard setup.py using setuptools, the extra_compile_args option can be used:

    ext_modules=[
        Extension(
            'c_module',
            sources=['extension.c'],
            extra_compile_args=['/d2FH4-'] if sys.platform == 'win32' else []
        )
    ],

To investigate the dependencies of a C extension (i.e., the .pyd file, a DLL in disguise) on Windows, Dependency Walker is a great tool. For diagnosing a failing import, the dlltracer tool may also provide additional details.

Windows ARM64 builds¶

cibuildwheel supports cross-compiling ARM64 wheels on all Windows runners, but a native ARM64 runner is required for testing. On non-native runners, tests for ARM64 wheels will be automatically skipped with a warning. Add "*-win_arm64" to your CIBW_TEST_SKIP setting to suppress the warning.

Cross-compilation on Windows relies on a supported build backend. Supported backends use an environment variable to specify their target platform (the one they are compiling native modules for, as opposed to the one they are running on), which is set in cibuildwheels/windows.py before building. Currently, setuptools>=65.4.1 and setuptools_rust are the only supported backends.

By default, ARM64 is not enabled when running on non-ARM64 runners. Use CIBW_ARCHS to select it.