20250317

Upgrades

• CPython 3.14.0a6

Distribution changes

• Compile sqlite with FTS3 enhanced query syntax enabled
• Declare the target_cxx value for all targets

Build changes

• Use a mirror for bzip2 to bypass rate limits on downloads
• Cache dependency downloads in CI on Linux

Full Changelog: 2025031...2025031

20250311

Breaking changes

• The musl distributions are now dynamically linked

  Previously, the musl distributions were fully statically linked, which prevented them from being used with extension modules. Now, the musl distributions have a shared libpython and dynamically link musl libc. Similar to the GNU libc distributions, this means that musl libc will need to be installed to use these distributions. These distributions are intended for use on musl Linux distributions, such as Alpine. The minimum required musl version is 1.2.2. The statically linked musl distributions are still available and are tagged with the +static build option, e.g., cpython-3.10.16+20250311-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl-debug+static-full.tar.zst. See #541 for implementation details.

• Windows artifacts with the -shared suffix will no longer be published: this variant became the default in 20240415 and duplicate archives have been published under the -shared suffix for backwards compatibility. Use the equivalent archives without the suffix.

Upgrades

• LLVM 19.1.6 -> 20.1.0

  This upgrade also includes a pair of cherry-picked pull requests (llvm/llvm-project#114990 and llvm/llvm-project#120267) that improve handling of computed gotos; fixing a performance regression in LLVM 19 and enabling BOLT optimizations to work on computed gotos.

Distribution changes

• Allow the experimental JIT to be enabled at runtime on Python 3.13 and 3.14 on Linux: for details, see #538 and #543; for macOS support, see #544

Build system changes

• Populate CXX during builds to avoid calling the system toolchain

Full Changelog: 2025021...2025031

20250212

Upgrades

• OpenSSL 3.0.15 -> 3.0.16
• CPython 3.14.0a4 -> 3.14.0a5

Distribution changes

• Add attestations to remaining release artifacts
• Use an array for cross-platform sed args to avoid unexpected shell expansion; eliminating extraneous .pc files
• Enable the tail call interpreter on 3.14+ clang builds; providing a significant performance improvement

Build system changes

• The Rust dependencies have been updated; see #510 and #515

Full Changelog: 2025020...2025021

20250205

Upgrades

• CPython: 3.12.8 -> 3.12.9
• CPython: 3.13.1 -> 3.13.2

Distribution changes

• pkg-config files are now relocatable instead of hard-coding our build-time path (#507, see also astral-sh/uv#11028)
• Ensure build attestations are present for all artifacts on main (derived release artifacts, like install-only tarballs, do not have attestations yet) (#501)

Build system changes

• Build scripts work if the Python you're using is itself from python-build-standalone (#505)

Full Changelog: 2025011...2025020

20250115

Upgrades

• libedit 20210910-3.1 -> 20240808-3.1
• CPython 3.14a3 -> 3.14a4
• tcl/tk 8.6.12 -> 8.6.14 (for all Python versions on Unix, only for Python 3.14 on Windows)

Distribution changes

• Add build attestations to artifacts on main
• Add Python 3.14 support on Windows
• Add riscv64-linux support

Build system changes

• Generate CI runners for build matrix dynamically
• Upgrade Python build environment requirements
• Call ulimit -n to avoid overheads in Docker image builds
• Retry on transient failures during artifact upload
• Implement matrix sharding in CI
• Retry downloads when <75% of the file is downloaded

Thanks @Xeonacid, @samypr100, @orf, and @kilian-hu for the contributions.

Full Changelog: 2025010...2025011

20250106

Distribution changes

• Support for Python 3.14.0a3 on macOS and GNU Linux (not yet available on Windows and musl Linux)
• Enable loading hot code into 2MB pages (hugify) with BOLT optimizations
• Use the cdsplit function splitting strategy for BOLT optimizations
• Enable PGO on x86-64-v4 GNU Linux (the lto variant is replaced by pgo+lto)

Upgrades

• autoconf 2.71 -> 2.72
• LLVM 18 -> 19.1.6
• zlib 1.2.13 -> 1.3.1

Fixes

• Add missing parser files to Python 3.13+ Linux and macOS
• Fix detection of SQLite features for the sqlite3 module, e.g., Connection.serialize
• Configure pkg-config during CPython builds: improves detection of various minor features
• Add missing -update-debug-section flag to BOLT instrumentation
• Skip test_embed test cases that segfault when BOLT is enabled
• Remove use of deprecated hfsort+ strategy in BOLT

Build system changes

• Skip building pythonbuild when not needed
• Separate patches for cross-compiling on older Python versions
• Use Python 3.12 to run builds on Windows
• Show Docker build errors when available
• Bump Docker timeout from 60s to 10m

Full Changelog: 2024121...2025010

20241219

Distribution changes

• Strip versioned Xcode path from build flags (#414)
• Sort keys in sysconfig data (#415)
• Patch _tkinter.c to look in base prefix (#421)
• Remove -Werror=unguarded-availability-new from sysconfig data (#422)
• Convert to UTF-8 prior to setting Tkinter path (#425)
• Pass -utf8 to vswhere (#429)
• Remove pgo-only builds on macOS and Linux; pgo+lto builds are available (#444)

Build system changes

• Remove mips / mipsel targets from CI; these were not published (#413)
• Scope libatomic allowance to MIPS on Python 3.13 (#411)
• Build system refactor to prepare for parallel Python version building (#419)
• Ignore clean-up errors for Windows temporary directory (#427)
• Require mimalloc explicitly on all GNU Python 3.13 builds (#391)
• Generate CI matrix at dynamically (#428)

Full Changelog: 2024120...2024121

20241206

This release includes a fix for 20241205, please see that release for other changes.

Fixes

• Create a copy of python3.13t.exe at python.exe and pythonw3.13t.exe at pythonw.exe for free-threaded Windows distributions: 20241205 attempted to remove the 3.13t suffixed executables, but it caused a regression with the virtual environment launcher. A later release may consolidate these executables under unsuffixed name for consistency. In the meantime, a copy is a simple, compatible solution.

20241205

This release includes a regression for free-threaded Python 3.13 on Windows. No other distribution versions are affected. The regression is resolved in 20241206 See #405 for details.

Breaking

• Drop support for Python 3.8: The 20241008 release was the last release with Python 3.8 distributions. Support has now been removed from the build process.
• Rename python3.13t.exe to python.exe in Windows free-threaded distributions: This matches the other Windows distributions. See astral-sh/uv#8298 for discussion.

Upgrades

• CPython 3.9.20 -> 3.9.21
• CPython 3.10.15 -> 3.10.16
• CPython 3.11.10 -> 3.11.11
• CPython 3.12.7 -> 3.12.8
• CPython 3.13.0 -> 3.13.1
• binutils 2.42 -> 2.43
• jom-windows-bin 1.1.3 -> 1.1.4
• mpdecimal 2.5.1 -> 4.0.0
• pip 24.1.2 -> 24.3.1
• setuptools 70.3.0 -> 75.6.0
• SQLite 3.46.0 -> 3.47.1
• strawberryperl 5.28.1.1 -> 5.38.2.2
• x11-util-macros 1.20.0 -> 1.20.1

Fixes

• Use relocatable shebang with space-in-path robustness
• Enable support for dbstat virtual tables in SQLite via SQLITE_ENABLE_DBSTAT_VTAB
• Ensure that Hacl_Hash_SHA2 does not appear as a library to link to

Other

• Build with Visual Studio 2022 instead of 2019

Full Changelog: 2024101...2024120

20241016

Upgrades

• OpenSSL 3.0.14 -> 3.0.15
• expat 2.5.0 -> 2.6.3

Fixes

• Fix freethreaded builds on Windows: The previous release published Windows distributions with the freethreaded tag but the GIL was not disabled. Now, the freethreaded Windows distributions are correct.

Full Changelog: 2024100...2024101