One of the real benefits of wheel files is that the file format is standardised: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0

One of the real benefits of wheel files is that the file format is standardised: https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/ https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0427/. This means the Python community can work towards standard tools and interfaces for working with Python packages rather than trying to support many different ways of installing / distributing packages.