Extract python wheels from pip wheel cache?

Question

It appears that pip now does automated caching of wheels:

http://pip.readthedocs.org/en/stable/reference/pip_install/#wheel-cache

I'm trying to collect wheels to create an installer for a custom learning setup (ipython3 notebook, etc), however, it appears that the cache uses a unreadable cache scheme.

Is there an easy way that the pip wheel cache can be dumped to the wheel files?

Answer 1

Use --download (or -d) option:

$ pip install package --download /tmp

Above command will download the wheel into /tmp directory (uses cache if the wheel is already downloaded)