Question

What does version name 'cp27' or 'cp35' mean in Python?

Like the files in https://pypi.python.org/pypi/gensim#downloads

I am using Python 2.7 on a 64-bit Window 7 PC, and don't know which version of python package I should install.

There are three questions:

1. Which of "gensim-0.12.4-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl" or "gensim-0.12.4.win-amd64-py2.7.exe" should I install? I have installed 'WinPython-64bit-2.7.10.3' on 64-bit Window 7 PC which I am using.

2. What does 'cp27' mean in Python or Python version name? I searched online with keywords 'Python cp27' but failed to find any answers.

3. Are there differences between these two versions of python packages? ('0.12.4-cp27-none-win_amd64' and 'win-amd64-py2.7') If there are, what are the differences?

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37023557/what-does-version-name-cp27-or-cp35-mean-in-python

Answer 1

If you check out the Python Enhancement Proposal (more commonly known as a PEP), you'll see that the cpN refers to the particular version of Python

in gensim-0.12.4-cp27-none-win_amd64.whl you can break it apart:

• 0.12.4 - package version, they may be using semantic versioning
• cp27 - this package is for CPython. IronPython, Jython, or PyPy will probably be unhappy.
• none - no feature of this package depends on the python Application Binary Interface, or ABI
• win_amd64 - this has been compiled for 64-bit Windows. That means that it probably has some code written in C/C++
• .whl - that means this is a wheel distribution. Which is handy, because it means if you're running CPython 2.7 64-bit on Windows, and assuming you have pip installed, all you have to do to get this package is run: py -2.7 -m pip install --use-wheel gensim (assuming that it's available on pypi, of course). You may need to py -2.7 -m pip install wheel first. But other than that, that should be all it takes.