Copyright (c) 2001-2021 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved.
See the end of this file for further copyright and license information.
Contents
For more complete instructions on contributing to CPython development, see the Using Python
Installable Python kits, and information about using Python, are available at Build Instructions
On Unix, Linux, BSD, macOS, and Cygwin:
./configure make make test sudo make install
This will install Python as python3.
You can pass many options to the configure script; run ./configure --help
to find out more. On macOS case-insensitive file systems and on Cygwin,
the executable is called python.exe; elsewhere it's just python.
Building a complete Python installation requires the use of various additional third-party libraries, depending on your build platform and configure options. Not all standard library modules are buildable or useable on all platforms. Refer to the Developer Guide for current detailed information on dependencies for various Linux distributions and macOS.
On macOS, there are additional configure and build options related to macOS framework and universal builds. Refer to PCbuild/readme.txt.
If you wish, you can create a subdirectory and invoke configure from there. For example:
mkdir debug cd debug ../configure --with-pydebug make make test
(This will fail if you also built at the top-level directory. You should do
a make clean at the top-level first.)
To get an optimized build of Python, configure --enable-optimizations
before you run make. This sets the default make targets up to enable
Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) and may be used to auto-enable Link Time
Optimization (LTO) on some platforms. For more details, see the sections
below.
PGO takes advantage of recent versions of the GCC or Clang compilers. If used,
either via configure --enable-optimizations or by manually running
make profile-opt regardless of configure flags, the optimized build
process will perform the following steps:
The entire Python directory is cleaned of temporary files that may have resulted from a previous compilation.
An instrumented version of the interpreter is built, using suitable compiler flags for each flavor. Note that this is just an intermediary step. The binary resulting from this step is not good for real-life workloads as it has profiling instructions embedded inside.
After the instrumented interpreter is built, the Makefile will run a training workload. This is necessary in order to profile the interpreter's execution. Note also that any output, both stdout and stderr, that may appear at this step is suppressed.
The final step is to build the actual interpreter, using the information collected from the instrumented one. The end result will be a Python binary that is optimized; suitable for distribution or production installation.
Enabled via configure's --with-lto flag. LTO takes advantage of the
ability of recent compiler toolchains to optimize across the otherwise
arbitrary .o file boundary when building final executables or shared
libraries for additional performance gains.
We have a comprehensive overview of the changes in the Misc/NEWS, but a full
accounting of changes can only be gleaned from the
Significant backward incompatible changes were made for the release of Python
3.0, which may cause programs written for Python 2 to fail when run with Python
3. For more information about porting your code from Python 2 to Python 3, see
the Testing
To test the interpreter, type By default, tests are prevented from overusing resources like disk space and
memory. To enable these tests, run If any tests fail, you can re-run the failing test(s) in verbose mode. For
example, if If the failure persists and appears to be a problem with Python rather than
your environment, you can Running & Writing Tests
for more on running tests. On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python
using the same installation prefix ( For example, if you want to install Python 2.7, 3.6, and 3.10 with 3.10 being the
primary version, you would execute Bug reports are welcome! You can use the on
GitHub. You can also follow development discussion on the Proposals for enhancement
If you have a proposal to change Python, you may want to send an email to the
python-ideas mailing lists for initial feedback. A
Python Enhancement Proposal (PEP) may be submitted if your idea gains ground.
All current PEPs, as well as guidelines for submitting a new PEP, are listed at
Release Schedule
See Copyright and License Information
Copyright (c) 2001-2021 Python Software Foundation. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2000 BeOpen.com. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1995-2001 Corporation for National Research Initiatives. All
rights reserved. Copyright (c) 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum. All rights reserved. See the /riveryin/cpython
Documentation
Converting From Python 2.x to 3.x
make test in the top-level directory. The
test set produces some output. You can generally ignore the messages about
skipped tests due to optional features which can't be imported. If a message
is printed about a failed test or a traceback or core dump is produced,
something is wrong.make testall.test_os and test_gdb failed, you can run:
make test TESTOPTS="-v test_os test_gdb"
Installing multiple versions
--prefix argument to the configure
script) you must take care that your primary python executable is not
overwritten by the installation of a different version. All files and
directories installed using make altinstall contain the major and minor
version and can thus live side-by-side. make install also creates
${prefix}/bin/python3 which refers to ${prefix}/bin/pythonX.Y. If you
intend to install multiple versions using the same prefix you must decide which
version (if any) is your "primary" version. Install that version using make
install. Install all other versions using make altinstall.make install in your 3.10 build directory
and make altinstall in the others.
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