Following Python's Development

Python's development is communicated through a myriad of ways, mostly through mailing lists, but also other forms.

Mailing Lists

python-dev is the primary mailing list for discussions about Python's development. The list is open to the public and is subscribed to by all core developers plus many people simply interested in following Python's development. Discussion is focused on issues related to Python's development, such as how to handle a specific issue, a PEP, etc.

Ideas about new functionality should not start here and instead should be sent to python-ideas.
Technical support questions should also not be asked here and instead should go to python-list or python-help.

Python-ideas is a mailing list open to the public to discuss ideas on changing Python. If a new idea does not start here (or python-list, discussed below), it will get redirected here.

Sometimes people post new ideas to python-list to gather community opinion before heading to python-ideas. The list is also sometimes known as comp.lang.python, the name of the newsgroup it mirrors (it is also known by the abbreviation c.l.py).

The python-committers mailing list is a private mailing list for core developers (the archives are publicly available). If something only affects core developers (e.g., the tree is frozen for commits, etc.), it is discussed here instead of python-dev to keep traffic down on the latter.

Python-checkins sends out an email for every commit to Python's various repositories from https://github.com/python/cpython. All core developers subscribe to this list and are known to reply to these emails to make comments about various issues they catch in the commit. Replies get redirected to python-dev.

There are two mailing lists related to issues on the issue tracker. If you only want an email for when a new issue is open, subscribe to new-bugs-announce. If you would rather receive an email for all changes made to any issue, subscribe to python-bugs-list.

General Python questions should go to python-list or tutor or similar resources, such as StackOverflow or the #python IRC channel on Libera.Chat.

Core-Workflow mailing list is the place to discuss and work on improvements to the CPython core development workflow.

A complete list of Python mailing lists can be found at https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo. Most lists are also mirrored at GMANE and can be read and posted to in various ways, including via web browsers, NNTP newsreaders, and RSS feed readers.

Discourse

We have our own Discourse forum for both developers and users. This forum complements the python-dev, python-ideas, python-help, and python-list mailing lists. Also, voting for new core developers takes place at Discourse.

IRC

Some core developers enjoy spending time on IRC discussing various issues regarding Python's development in the #python-dev channel on irc.libera.chat. This is not a place to ask for help with Python, but to discuss issues related to Python's own development. See also the #python-dev-notifs channel for bots notifications.

Blogs

Several core developers are active bloggers and discuss Python's development that way. You can find their blogs (and various other developers who use Python) at http://planetpython.org/.

Standards of behaviour in these communication channels

We try to foster environments of mutual respect, tolerance and encouragement, as described in the PSF's Diversity Statement. Abiding by the guidelines in this document and asking questions or posting suggestions in the appropriate channels are an excellent way to get started on the mutual respect part, greatly increasing the chances of receiving tolerance and encouragement in return.

Setting Expectations for Open Source Participation

Burn-out is common in open source due to a misunderstanding of what users, contributors, and maintainers should expect from each other. Brett Cannon gave a talk about this topic that sets out to help everyone set reasonable expectations of each other in order to make open source pleasant for everyone involved.

Additional Repositories

Python Core Workflow hosts the codebase for tools such as cherry_picker and blurb.

Python Performance Benchmark project is intended to be an authoritative source of benchmarks for all Python implementations.