It’s obviously a minor release today that shouldn’t draw much attention away from the new hotness, but Python 3.13.8 is also here…
This is the eighth maintenance release of Python 3.13
Python 3.13 is the newest previous major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations compared to Python 3.12. 3.13.8 is the eighth maintenance release of 3.13, containing around 200 bugfixes, build improvements and documentation changes since 3.13.7.
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
- A new and improved interactive interpreter, based on PyPy’s, featuring multi-line editing and color support, as well as colorized exception tracebacks.
- An experimental free-threaded build mode, which disables the Global Interpreter Lock, allowing threads to run more concurrently. The build mode is available as an experimental feature in the Windows and macOS installers as well.
- A preliminary, experimental JIT, providing the ground work for significant performance improvements.
- The
locals()builtin function (and its C equivalent) now has well-defined semantics when mutating the returned mapping, which allows debuggers to operate more consistently. - A modified version of mimalloc is now included, optional but enabled by default if supported by the platform, and required for the free-threaded build mode.
- Docstrings now have their leading indentation stripped, reducing memory use and the size of .pyc files. (Most tools handling docstrings already strip leading indentation.)
- The dbm module has a new dbm.sqlite3 backend that is used by default when creating new files.
- The minimum supported macOS version was changed from 10.9 to 10.13 (High Sierra). Older macOS versions will not be supported going forward.
- WASI is now a Tier 2 supported platform. Emscripten is no longer an officially supported platform (but Pyodide continues to support Emscripten).
- iOS is now a Tier 3 supported platform.
- Android is now a Tier 3 supported platform.
Typing
- Support for type defaults in type parameters.
- A new type narrowing annotation,
typing.TypeIs. - A new annotation for read-only items in TypeDicts.
- A new annotation for marking deprecations in the type system.
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.
For more details on the changes to Python 3.13, see What’s new in Python 3.13.
More resources
- Online Documentation
- PEP 719, 3.13 Release Schedule
- Report bugs at GitHub · Where software is built.
- Help fund Python directly (or via GitHub Sponsors), and support the Python community.
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.
Regards from the previous tier of release managers,
Thomas Wouters @thomas
Ned Deily @nad
Steve Dower @steve.dower
Łukasz Langa @ambv