title: `'pip wheel .` much slower than 'setup.py bdist_wheel`
body: <p>With <a href="https://gist.github.com/rosskarchner/828373043b6c8f4b724e89af937b4563" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this setup.py</a> (not yet committed to the root of <a href="https://github.com/cfpb/cfgov-refresh/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this project</a>) Python 2.7 , <code>pip wheel .</code> takes almost 20 minutes</p>
  
  <pre><code>$:~/projects/cfgov-refresh$ time pip wheel .                                                                                                     
     Processing /Users/karchnerr/projects/cfgov-refresh
     Building wheels for collected packages: cfgov
     Running setup.py bdist_wheel for cfgov ... done
     Stored in directory: /Users/karchnerr/projects/cfgov-refresh
     Successfully built cfgov
  
      real    19m50.061s
      user    0m29.641s
      sys     1m21.651s
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>While <code>setup.py bdist_wheel</code> takes mere seconds.</p>
  
  <pre><code>rk@:~/projects/cfgov-refresh$ time python setup.py bdist_wheel
      [... ommited a bunch of noise ...]
      real    0m2.575s
      user    0m0.586s
      sys     0m0.309s
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Any idea what accounts for such a big difference? Is there something I should be doing differently?</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <p>Using the <code>ts</code> command from moreutils, I can see that a huge chunk of the time is spent before pip even starts processing setup.py</p>
  
  <pre><code>[2017-01-17 15:41:36] Processing /Users/karchnerr/projects/cfgov-refresh
  [2017-01-17 15:54:42]   Running setup.py     (path:/private/var/folders/_f/3lrtcs492pnbf6zcql9t0n380000gp/T/pip-p6TG9c-    build/setup.py) egg_info for package from file:///Users/karchnerr/projects/cfgov-refresh
  </code></pre>