Building redistributable wheels/sdists

Building wheels

As a part of building a Python package uv2nix builds a wheel which is installed into the Nix store. The intermediate wheel file is normally discarded once the build is complete and the wheel has been installed into it's Nix store prefix.

Using multiple outputs

Using multiple outputs allows us to not only perform our regular install steps, but also to install the wheel files into a separate output. To add a separate dist output:

pythonSet.hello-world.override (old: {
  outputs = [ "out" dist" ];
})

This will install the produced wheel into the build output directory of the dist output, producing the same contents as a uv build would produce in dist/.

Augmenting install behaviour

To augment the install behaviour to install the produced wheel into the Nix store output by overriding our package:

pythonSet.hello-world.override {
  pyprojectHook = pythonSet.pyprojectDistHook;
}

This will install the produced wheel into the build output directory, producing the same contents as a uv build would produce in dist/. Note that this method will not perform the regular pyproject.nix install steps, making the output unsuitable for usage with mkVirtualEnv.

Building sdists

By default pyproject.nix's builders will produce a wheel.

If you want to distribute an sdist instead override uvBuildType:

(pythonSet.hello-world.override {
  pyprojectHook = pythonSet.pyprojectDistHook;
}).overrideAttrs(old: {
  env.uvBuildType = "sdist";
})