Early 3.14.0 rc2 and extra rc3

[hugovk (Hugo van Kemenade)]

FYI because of the bug fix requiring a magic number bump, I’ve decided to do rc2 this Thursday, and add an additional rc3 on 2025-09-16 (during the core sprint), which is about midway between rc2 and final.

As described in the linked topic:

@encukou

Long version: If we bump the number, __pycache__/*.pyc files compiled for rc1 won’t be usable in rc2. Python will re-compile them automatically, so this will only affect you if the user running the code doesn’t have permissions to the __pycache__ directories – typically, if they’re installed in a read-only, “system-wide” or otherwise shared location. In that case, Python will skip writing the cache, making repeated imports slow. In the past, we also saw security warnings due to failed attempts to write to such “shared” locations.

The ABI isn’t changing. Wheels built for rc1 should be fine for rc2, rc3 and 3.14.x and beyond. So this shouldn’t affect too many people but let’s get this out for testing sooner.

Updated schedule:

• 3.14.0 candidate 2: Thursday, 2025-08-14
• 3.14.0 candidate 3: Tuesday, 2025-09-16
• 3.14.0 final: Tuesday, 2025-10-07 (no change)

[AA-Turner (Adam Turner)]

@hugovk

3.14.0 candidate 2: Tuesday, 2025-08-14

Should this be

• 3.14.0 candidate 2: Thursday, 2025-08-14

Or next week on Tuesday?:

• 3.14.0 candidate 2: Tuesday, 2025-08-19

[hugovk (Hugo van Kemenade)]

Yes, thanks, fixed!

[hugovk (Hugo van Kemenade)]

This is now out:

Python 3.14.0rc2 and 3.13.7 are go!

Not one but two expedited releases! Python 3.14.0rc2 It’s the final penultimate 3.14 release candidate! https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3140rc2/ Note: rc2 was originally planned for 2025-08-26, but we fixed a bug that required bumping the magic number stored in Python bytecode (.pyc) files. This means .pyc files created for rc1 cannot be used for rc2, and they’ll be recompiled. The ABI isn’t changing. Wheels built for rc1 should be fine …