This is Python version 3.7.0 alpha 1

Python 3.x is a new version of the language, which is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details, especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work, have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have finally been removed.

Using Python

Installable Python kits, and information about using Python, are available at python.org.

Build Instructions

On Unix, Linux, BSD, OSX, 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 OSX and Cygwin, the executable is called python.exe; elsewhere it's just python.

On Mac OS X, if you have configured Python with --enable-framework, you should use make frameworkinstall to do the installation. Note that this installs the Python executable in a place that is not normally on your PATH, you may want to set up a symlink in /usr/local/bin.

On Windows, see 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 toplevel 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 bellow.

Profile Guided Optimization

PGO takes advantage of recent versions of the GCC or Clang compilers. If ran, make profile-opt will do several steps.

First, the entire Python directory is cleaned of temporary files that may have resulted in a previous compilation.

Then, an instrumented version of the interpreter is built, using suitable compiler flags for each flavour. Note that this is just an intermediary step and the binary resulted after this step is not good for real life workloads, as it has profiling instructions embedded inside.

After this instrumented version of the interpreter is built, the Makefile will automatically run a training workload. This is necessary in order to profile the interpreter execution. Note also that any output, both stdout and stderr, that may appear at this step is suppressed.

Finally, the last step is to rebuild the interpreter, using the information collected in the previous one. The end result will be a Python binary that is optimized and suitable for distribution or production installation.

Link Time Optimization

Enabled via configure's --with-lto flag. LTO takes advantages of recent compiler toolchains ability to optimize across the otherwise arbitrary .o file boundary when building final executables or shared libraries for additional performance gains.

What's New

We have a comprehensive overview of the changes in the What's New in Python 3.7 document.

For a more detailed change log, read Misc/NEWS (though this file, too, is incomplete, and also doesn't list anything merged in from the 2.7 release under development).

If you want to install multiple versions of Python see the section below entitled "Installing multiple versions".

Documentation

Documentation for Python 3.7 is online, updated daily.

It can also be downloaded in many formats for faster access. The documentation is downloadable in HTML, PDF, and reStructuredText formats; the latter version is primarily for documentation authors, translators, and people with special formatting requirements.

If you would like to contribute to the development of Python, relevant documentation is available at: Python Developer's Guide.

For information about building Python's documentation, refer to Doc/README.txt.

Converting From Python 2.x to 3.x

Python starting with 2.6 contains features to help locating code that needs to be changed, such as optional warnings when deprecated features are used, and backported versions of certain key Python 3.x features.

A source-to-source translation tool, 2to3, can take care of the mundane task of converting large amounts of source code. It is not a complete solution but is complemented by the deprecation warnings in 2.6. See 2to3 documentation for more information.

Testing

To test the interpreter, type 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.

By default, tests are prevented from overusing resources like disk space and memory. To enable these tests, run make testall.

IMPORTANT: If the tests fail and you decide to mail a bug report, don't include the output of make test. It is useless. Run the failing test manually, as follows:

./python -m test -v test_whatever

(substituting the top of the source tree for '.' if you built in a different directory). This runs the test in verbose mode.

Installing multiple versions

On Unix and Mac systems if you intend to install multiple versions of Python using the same installation prefix (--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.

For example, if you want to install Python 2.7, 3.6, and 3.7 with 3.7 being the primary version, you would execute make install in your 3.7 build directory and make altinstall in the others.

Issue Tracker and Mailing List

We're soliciting bug reports about all aspects of the language. Fixes are also welcome, preferably in unified diff format. Please use the issue tracker: bugs.python.org.

If you're not sure whether you're dealing with a bug or a feature, use the mailing list: python-dev@python.org. To subscribe to the list, use the mailman form: python-dev

Proposals for enhancement

If you have a proposal to change Python, you may want to send an email to the comp.lang.python or 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 python.org/dev/peps/.

Release Schedule

See PEP 537 for Python 3.7 release details.

Copyright and License Information

See the file "LICENSE" for information on the history of this software, terms & conditions for usage, and a DISCLAIMER OF ALL WARRANTIES.

This Python distribution contains no GNU General Public License (GPL) code, so it may be used in proprietary projects. There are interfaces to some GNU code but these are entirely optional.

All trademarks referenced herein are property of their respective holders.

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