Add pre build wheel install for better development experience

[jikunshang]

Essential Elements of an Effective PR Description Checklist

• The purpose of the PR, such as "Fix some issue (link existing issues this PR will resolve)".
• The test plan, such as providing test command.
• The test results, such as pasting the results comparison before and after, or e2e results
• (Optional) The necessary documentation update, such as updating supported_models.md and examples for a new model.

PLEASE FILL IN THE PR DESCRIPTION HERE ENSURING ALL CHECKLIST ITEMS ABOVE HAVE BEEN CONSIDERED.

Purpose

reopen #67

usage:

1. build wheel and install this wheel with dev install

pip wheel --no-build-isolation  . -v 
VLLM_USE_PRECOMPILED=1  pip install --no-build-isolation -e . -v

2. install a pre build wheel by VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION

VLLM_USE_PRECOMPILED=1 VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION=./vllm_xpu_kernels-0.0.1-cp312-cp312-linux_x86_64.whl pip install --no-build-isolation -e . -v

Test Plan

Test Result

(Optional) Documentation Update

BEFORE SUBMITTING, PLEASE READ https://docs.vllm.ai/en/latest/contributing (anything written below this line will be removed by GitHub Actions)

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

This PR adds support for using pre-built wheels during development installation of vllm-xpu-kernels, allowing developers to skip the compilation step by either specifying a local wheel path or having the setup script download one automatically.

Changes:

• Adds VLLM_USE_PRECOMPILED and VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION environment variable support in tools/envs.py
• Adds precompiled_wheel_utils class and precompiled_build_ext class to setup.py to extract .so files from an existing wheel and bypass CMake builds
• Moves ext_modules and cmdclass initialization after the precompiled logic block

Reviewed changes

Copilot reviewed 2 out of 2 changed files in this pull request and generated 7 comments.

File	Description
tools/envs.py	Defines VLLM_USE_PRECOMPILED env var, auto-enabling it when VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION is set
setup.py	Adds utilities and logic for extracting precompiled binaries from a wheel and skipping the CMake build

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[Copilot]

Missing space between the two f-strings — the output will read "...from to " without a space separating the two parts.

Suggested change

	print(f"Downloading wheel from {wheel_url_or_path}"
	print(f"Downloading wheel from {wheel_url_or_path} "

[Copilot]

This debug print statement calls get_vllm_version() a second time (it's called again on line 430), which may trigger side effects (e.g., writing _version.py). Consider capturing the result in a variable and printing it instead.

Suggested change

	print(f"version: get_vllm_version()={get_vllm_version()}")
	wheel_location = os.getenv(
	"VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION",
	f"./vllm_xpu_kernels-{get_vllm_version()}-cp312-cp312-linux_x86_64.whl"
	vllm_version = get_vllm_version()
	print(f"version: get_vllm_version()={vllm_version}")
	wheel_location = os.getenv(
	"VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION",
	f"./vllm_xpu_kernels-{vllm_version}-cp312-cp312-linux_x86_64.whl"

[Copilot]

os.getenv() with a default value never returns None — when VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION is not set, it returns the hardcoded default path instead of None. This means the else branch (lines 435–456) that handles downloading from a remote URL is dead code and will never execute.

Suggested change

	wheel_location = os.getenv(
	"VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION",
	f"./vllm_xpu_kernels-{get_vllm_version()}-cp312-cp312-linux_x86_64.whl"
	)
	if wheel_location is not None:
	wheel_location = os.getenv("VLLM_PRECOMPILED_WHEEL_LOCATION")
	if wheel_location:

[Copilot]

The Python version tag cp312-cp312 is hardcoded in the default wheel filename. This will silently use the wrong file on Python 3.11 or other versions. Consider deriving the tag dynamically using sysconfig or sys.version_info.

[Copilot]

The method is annotated with # TODO: not used currently but is still called on line 444 inside the dead else branch (see Comment 3). This is confusing — the TODO comment and the actual usage are inconsistent. The comment should be removed or updated to reflect the actual intent.

Suggested change

# TODO: not used currently.

[Copilot]

Class names should use CapWords (PascalCase) per PEP 8. This class should be named PrecompiledWheelUtils.

Suggested change

	class precompiled_wheel_utils:
	class PrecompiledWheelUtils:

[Copilot]

Re-raising a ValueError while suppressing the original exception chain (from None) discards the original traceback, making debugging harder. Consider using raise to re-raise or raise ValueError(...) from err to preserve the cause.

Suggested change

	raise ValueError(err) from None
	raise ValueError(err) from err

[xinyu-intel]

fix pre-commit