Create wheels from conda-forge packages

[jaimergp]

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Motivation

While conda packages offer more packaging flexibility for shared libraries, wheels are sometimes more convenient for some Python-adjacent end-users. There are a number of examples out there following this strategy:

• https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf4-python/blob/master/.github/workflows/cibuildwheel.yml
• Add cibuildwheel pygraphviz/pygraphviz#537
• https://github.com/openmm/openmm-wheels

cc @ocefpaf @isuruf

Expected result

An installable project that can simplify the involved workarounds, possibly available as a Github Actions action so folks can easily create their wheels on CI.

Work items

TBD

References

• https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-press (revive it?)
• https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf4-python/blob/master/.github/workflows/cibuildwheel.yml
• Add cibuildwheel pygraphviz/pygraphviz#537
• https://github.com/openmm/openmm-wheels

Skills / personnel

• Deep knowledge of library linking across platforms
• Familiar with the intricacies of wheel vendoring

Estimated costs and/or resources needed (optional)

A ballpark figure is around 400h of work.

[beckermr]

There is some prior art on this. https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-press

[ocefpaf]

There is some prior art on this. https://github.com/conda-incubator/conda-press

Conda-press goal is similar but the road to get there is quite different. In the examples above the plan is to use conda-forge non-Python dependencies to build compliant wheels. Conda-press converts conda packages to wheels and breaks the compliance in a few places. That is one of the reasons it was abandoned. It was a hard sell for the ecosystem. Providing community curated dependencies, on the other hand, is easier to get folks into to.

[wolfv]

We are currently working on pixi build that could simplify this as well :)