Thursday, June 6, 2024

Python 3.13.0 beta 2 released

I'm pleased to announce the release of Python 3.13 beta 2.

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3130b2/

 

This is a beta preview of Python 3.13

Python 3.13 is still in development. This release, 3.13.0b2, is the second of four beta release previews of 3.13.

Beta release previews are intended to give the wider community the opportunity to test new features and bug fixes and to prepare their projects to support the new feature release.

We strongly encourage maintainers of third-party Python projects to test with 3.13 during the beta phase and report issues found to the Python bug tracker as soon as possible. While the release is planned to be feature complete entering the beta phase, it is possible that features may be modified or, in rare cases, deleted up until the start of the release candidate phase (Tuesday 2024-07-30). Our goal is to have no ABI changes after beta 4 and as few code changes as possible after 3.13.0rc1, the first release candidate. To achieve that, it will be extremely important to get as much exposure for 3.13 as possible during the beta phase.

Two particularly noteworthy changes in beta 2 involve the macOS installer we provide:

  • The minimum supported macOS version was changed from 10.9 to 10.13 (High Sierra). Older macOS versions will not be supported going forward.
  • The macOS installer package now includes an optional additional build of Python 3.13 with the experimental free-threading feature enabled. The free-threaded version, python3.13t, is separate from and co-exists with the traditional GIL-only installation. The free-threaded build is not installed by default; use the Customize option of the installer as explained in the installer readme. Since this is an experimental feature, there may be late-breaking issues found; see the free-threaded macOS build issue on GitHub for the most recent status.

Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and its use is not recommended for production environments.

 

Major new features of the 3.13 series, compared to 3.12

Some of the new major new features and changes in Python 3.13 are:

New features

Typing

Removals and new deprecations

  • PEP 594 (Removing dead batteries from the standard library) scheduled removals of many deprecated modules: aifc, audioop, chunk, cgi, cgitb, crypt, imghdr, mailcap, msilib, nis, nntplib, ossaudiodev, pipes, sndhdr, spwd, sunau, telnetlib, uu, xdrlib, lib2to3.
  • Many other removals of deprecated classes, functions and methods in various standard library modules.
  • C API removals and deprecations. (Some removals present in alpha 1 were reverted in alpha 2, as the removals were deemed too disruptive at this time.)
  • New deprecations, most of which are scheduled for removal from Python 3.15 or 3.16.

(Hey, fellow core developer, if a feature you find important is missing from this list, let Thomas know.)

For more details on the changes to Python 3.13, see What’s new in Python 3.13 . The next pre-release of Python 3.13 will be 3.13.0b3, currently scheduled for 2024-06-25.

 

More resources

 

Enjoy the new releases

Thanks to all of the many volunteers who help make Python Development and these releases possible! Please consider supporting our efforts by volunteering yourself or through organization contributions to the Python Software Foundation.

Your release team,
Thomas Wouters
Łukasz Langa
Ned Deily
Steve Dower