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+# PyZMQ: Python bindings for ØMQ
+
+[![Build Status](https://travis-ci.org/zeromq/pyzmq.svg?branch=master)](https://travis-ci.org/zeromq/pyzmq)
+
+This package contains Python bindings for [ØMQ](http://www.zeromq.org).
+ØMQ is a lightweight and fast messaging implementation.
+
+PyZMQ should work with any Python ≥ 2.6 (including Python 3), as well as PyPy.
+The Cython backend used by CPython supports libzmq ≥ 2.1.4 (including 3.2.x and 4.x),
+but the CFFI backend used by PyPy only supports libzmq ≥ 3.2.2 (including 4.x).
+
+For a summary of changes to pyzmq, see our
+[changelog](http://zeromq.github.io/pyzmq/changelog.html).
+
+### ØMQ 3.x, 4.x
+
+PyZMQ ≥ 2.2.0 fully supports the 3.x and 4.x APIs of libzmq,
+developed at [zeromq/libzmq](https://github.com/zeromq/libzmq).
+No code to change, no flags to pass,
+just build pyzmq against the latest and it should work.
+
+PyZMQ does not support the old libzmq 2 API on PyPy.
+
+## Documentation
+
+See PyZMQ's Sphinx-generated
+[documentation](http://zeromq.github.com/pyzmq) on GitHub for API
+details, and some notes on Python and Cython development. If you want to
+learn about using ØMQ in general, the excellent [ØMQ
+Guide](http://zguide.zeromq.org/py:all) is the place to start, which has a
+Python version of every example. We also have some information on our
+[wiki](https://github.com/zeromq/pyzmq/wiki).
+
+## Downloading
+
+Unless you specifically want to develop PyZMQ, we recommend downloading
+the PyZMQ source code, eggs, or wheels from
+[PyPI](http://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyzmq). On Windows, you can get `.exe` installers
+from [Christoph Gohlke](http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/#pyzmq).
+
+You can also get the latest source code from our GitHub repository, but
+building from the repository will require that you install Cython
+version 0.16 or later.
+
+## Building and installation
+
+For more detail on building pyzmq, see [our Wiki](https://github.com/zeromq/pyzmq/wiki/Building-and-Installing-PyZMQ).
+
+We build wheels for OS X and Windows, so you can get a binary installer on those platforms with:
+
+    pip install pyzmq
+
+but compiling from source with `pip install pyzmq` should work in most environments.
+If the wheel doesn't work for some reason, or you want to force pyzmq to be compiled
+(this is often preferable if you already have libzmq installed and configured the way you want it),
+you can force installation with:
+
+    pip install --no-use-wheel pyzmq
+
+When compiling pyzmq (e.g. installing with pip on Linux),
+it is generally recommended that zeromq be installed separately,
+via homebrew, apt, yum, etc:
+
+    # Debian-based
+    sudo apt-get install libzmq3-dev
+
+    # RHEL-based
+    sudo yum install libzmq3-devel
+
+If this is not available, pyzmq will *try* to build libzmq as a Python Extension,
+though this is not guaranteed to work.
+
+Building pyzmq from the git repo (including release tags on GitHub) requires Cython.
+
+## Old versions
+
+For libzmq 2.0.x, use pyzmq release 2.0.10.1.
+
+pyzmq-2.1.11 was the last version of pyzmq to support Python 2.5,
+and pyzmq ≥ 2.2.0 requires Python ≥ 2.6.
+pyzmq-13.0.0 introduces PyPy support via CFFI, which only supports libzmq-3.2.2 and newer.
+
+PyZMQ releases ≤ 2.2.0 matched libzmq versioning, but this is no longer the case,
+starting with PyZMQ 13.0.0 (it was the thirteenth release, so why not?).
+PyZMQ ≥ 13.0 follows semantic versioning conventions accounting only for PyZMQ itself.
+