How it works...

The wheel file name format breaks down to <package_name>-<version>-<language_version>-<abi_tag>-<platform_tag>.whl. The package name is the name of the module to be installed, followed by the version of this particular wheel file.

The language version refers to Python 2 or Python 3; it can be as specific as necessary, such as py27 (any Python 2.7.x version) or py3 (any Python 3.x.x version).

The ABI tag refers to the Application Binary Interface. In the past, the underlying C API (Application Programming Interface) that the Python interpreter relies on changed with every release, typically by adding API features rather than changing or removing existing APIs. The Windows OS is particularly affected, where each Python feature release creates a new name for the Python Window's DLL.

The ABI refers to Python's binary compatibility. While changes to Python structure definitions may not break API compatibility, ABI compatibility may be affected. Most ABI issues occur from changes in the in-memory structure layout.

Since version 3.2, a limited set of API features has been guaranteed to be stable for the ABI. Specifying an ABI tag allows the developer to specify which Python implementations a package is compatible with, for example, PyPy versus CPython. Generally speaking, this tag is set to none, implying there is no specific ABI requirement.

The platform tag specifies which OS and CPU the wheel package is designed to run. This is normally any, unless the wheel's developer had a particular reason to limit the package to a specific system type.