Add something about "CondaPypiError: No wheel file available for XXX" to the Troubleshooting section ?

[jypeter]

Checklist

• I added a descriptive title
• I searched open reports and couldn't find a duplicate

What happened?

I learned about the helium package that seemed interesting, but that can only be installed with pip

I had learned about conda-pypi a few days earlier, and I thought I would test both at the same time. Unfortunately, I got the following result (both on a Win and Linux installation)

(some_env) $ conda pypi install helium
Inspecting pypi and conda dependencies
PYPI index channels:
 - https://pypi.org/simple/
Conda channels:
 - file:///home/jypmce/.local/share/conda-pypi
 - conda-forge
 - defaults
Converting required pypi packages: failed

CondaPypiError: No wheel file available for helium. Only source distributions are available. conda-pypi requires wheel files for conversion.

I have absolutely no idea how pip installation usually works and what this wheel stuff is, and if this error means that I'm in a dead end (and should use pip if I really want to test helium)

• I have not found any help about this in the Troubleshooting page. Maybe someone could add something about dealing with No wheel file available for helium to Troubleshooting
• Looking for wheel in the documentation did not work: Searching the documentation returns dead links ("wheel" example) ? #244
• Having a look at existing issues did not help either. I learned at least in Error immediately when no wheel is available for a package #121 that I should consider myself lucky to have quickly received an error message :-)

For reference, I have pasted below the output of what I get if I use pip install helium in a test environment. It sure has a lot of dependencies, that I'd rather have conda deal with

(test_01) PS C:\Users\jypeter> pip install helium
Collecting helium
  Downloading helium-7.0.0.tar.gz (40 kB)
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
  Preparing metadata (pyproject.toml) ... done
Collecting selenium>=4.16.0 (from helium)
  Downloading selenium-4.40.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (7.7 kB)
Collecting certifi>=2026.1.4 (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading certifi-2026.1.4-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.5 kB)
Collecting trio<1.0,>=0.31.0 (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading trio-0.32.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (8.5 kB)
Collecting trio-websocket<1.0,>=0.12.2 (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading trio_websocket-0.12.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (5.1 kB)
Collecting trio-typing>=0.10.0 (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading trio_typing-0.10.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (10 kB)
Collecting types-certifi>=2021.10.8.3 (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading types_certifi-2021.10.8.3-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.4 kB)
Collecting types-urllib3>=1.26.25.14 (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading types_urllib3-1.26.25.14-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.7 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: typing_extensions<5.0,>=4.15.0 in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (4.15.0)
Collecting urllib3<3.0,>=2.6.3 (from urllib3[socks]<3.0,>=2.6.3->selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading urllib3-2.6.3-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (6.9 kB)
Collecting websocket-client<2.0,>=1.8.0 (from selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading websocket_client-1.9.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (8.3 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: attrs>=23.2.0 in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from trio<1.0,>=0.31.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (25.4.0)
Requirement already satisfied: sortedcontainers in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from trio<1.0,>=0.31.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (2.4.0)
Requirement already satisfied: idna in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from trio<1.0,>=0.31.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (3.11)
Collecting outcome (from trio<1.0,>=0.31.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading outcome-1.3.0.post0-py2.py3-none-any.whl.metadata (2.6 kB)
Collecting sniffio>=1.3.0 (from trio<1.0,>=0.31.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading sniffio-1.3.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (3.9 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: cffi>=1.14 in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from trio<1.0,>=0.31.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (2.0.0)
Collecting wsproto>=0.14 (from trio-websocket<1.0,>=0.12.2->selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading wsproto-1.3.2-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (5.2 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: pysocks!=1.5.7,<2.0,>=1.5.6 in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from urllib3[socks]<3.0,>=2.6.3->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (1.7.1)
Requirement already satisfied: pycparser in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from cffi>=1.14->trio<1.0,>=0.31.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (2.22)
Collecting mypy-extensions>=0.4.2 (from trio-typing>=0.10.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading mypy_extensions-1.1.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.1 kB)
Collecting async-generator (from trio-typing>=0.10.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading async_generator-1.10-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (4.9 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: packaging in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from trio-typing>=0.10.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (25.0)
Requirement already satisfied: importlib-metadata in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from trio-typing>=0.10.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (8.7.0)
Collecting h11<1,>=0.16.0 (from wsproto>=0.14->trio-websocket<1.0,>=0.12.2->selenium>=4.16.0->helium)
  Downloading h11-0.16.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (8.3 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: zipp>=3.20 in c:\utils\miniforge3_2025-09\envs\test_01\lib\site-packages (from importlib-metadata->trio-typing>=0.10.0->selenium>=4.16.0->helium) (3.23.0)
Downloading selenium-4.40.0-py3-none-any.whl (9.6 MB)
   ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 9.6/9.6 MB 51.6 MB/s  0:00:00
Downloading trio-0.32.0-py3-none-any.whl (512 kB)
Downloading trio_websocket-0.12.2-py3-none-any.whl (21 kB)
Downloading urllib3-2.6.3-py3-none-any.whl (131 kB)
Downloading websocket_client-1.9.0-py3-none-any.whl (82 kB)
Downloading certifi-2026.1.4-py3-none-any.whl (152 kB)
Downloading outcome-1.3.0.post0-py2.py3-none-any.whl (10 kB)
Downloading sniffio-1.3.1-py3-none-any.whl (10 kB)
Downloading trio_typing-0.10.0-py3-none-any.whl (42 kB)
Downloading mypy_extensions-1.1.0-py3-none-any.whl (5.0 kB)
Downloading types_certifi-2021.10.8.3-py3-none-any.whl (2.1 kB)
Downloading types_urllib3-1.26.25.14-py3-none-any.whl (15 kB)
Downloading wsproto-1.3.2-py3-none-any.whl (24 kB)
Downloading h11-0.16.0-py3-none-any.whl (37 kB)
Downloading async_generator-1.10-py3-none-any.whl (18 kB)
Building wheels for collected packages: helium
  Building wheel for helium (pyproject.toml) ... done
  Created wheel for helium: filename=helium-7.0.0-py3-none-any.whl size=41424 sha256=4ad3608fdd8cd9d26247a85d106bc66de0f6cb3f7643083d46875026419da6f3
  Stored in directory: c:\users\jypeter\appdata\local\pip\cache\wheels\09\c4\95\572aec6e9a32d0795b058987814cd0dec765583838a7f20cd7
Successfully built helium
Installing collected packages: types-urllib3, types-certifi, websocket-client, urllib3, sniffio, outcome, mypy-extensions, h11, certifi, async-generator, wsproto, trio, trio-websocket, trio-typing, selenium, helium
  Attempting uninstall: urllib3
    Found existing installation: urllib3 2.6.2
    Uninstalling urllib3-2.6.2:
      Successfully uninstalled urllib3-2.6.2
  Attempting uninstall: certifi
    Found existing installation: certifi 2025.11.12
    Uninstalling certifi-2025.11.12:
      Successfully uninstalled certifi-2025.11.12
Successfully installed async-generator-1.10 certifi-2026.1.4 h11-0.16.0 helium-7.0.0 mypy-extensions-1.1.0 outcome-1.3.0.post0 selenium-4.40.0 sniffio-1.3.1 trio-0.32.0 trio-typing-0.10.0 trio-websocket-0.12.2 types-certifi-2021.10.8.3 types-urllib3-1.26.25.14 urllib3-2.6.3 websocket-client-1.9.0 wsproto-1.3.2

Additional Context

No response

[danyeaw]

Hey @jypeter, thanks for opening this issue and the feedback. I absolutely agree that ideally error messages should guide to how to resolve them. However, in this case conda-pypi is only able to install binary packages so there isn't really an alternative besides convincing the helium maintainers to start to publish wheels. Helium is only available as a source distribution, and when you pip install, it is building the package at install time. You can see that during the pip install process on the: Building wheels for collected packages: helium line.

Technically, conda-pypi could probably run a build tool and also compile pure-Python wheels, but so far it has been out of scope for the project.