cpython

CPython is the official implementation of the Python programming language, maintained by the Python Software Foundation. This repository contains the source code for Python 3.16.0 alpha 0, including the interpreter, standard library, build system, and tests. The README provides links to the Python website, source code, issue tracker, documentation, and the developer's guide. It explains how to contribute to CPython development and how to use and build Python. Build instructions cover Unix-like systems, Linux, BSD, macOS, and Cygwin: the typical process is running ./configure, then make, then make test, then sudo make install. Python will be installed as python3 on most systems, with macOS case-insensitive filesystems and Cygwin using python.exe. Windows build instructions are in PCbuild/readme.txt. Users can build in a subdirectory for debug builds, and an optimized build can be enabled with configure --enable-optimizations, which uses Profile Guided Optimization (PGO). Link Time Optimization can be enabled with the --with-lto configure flag. The README points to the "What's New in Python 3.16" document and Misc/NEWS for change logs. Documentation is available online at docs.python.org and can be downloaded in HTML, EPUB, and reStructuredText formats. Testing is done with make test. The README notes that skipped tests due to optional features are normal, but failed tests or tracebacks indicate a problem. The make buildbottest target enables resource-intensive tests. Failing tests can be rerun in verbose mode, and bug reports can be filed if the failures appear to be issues with Python. For installing multiple Python versions on Unix and Mac systems, the README recommends using make altinstall for non-primary versions so that the primary python executable is not overwritten. The release schedule is covered by PEP 826 for Python 3.16. The README also describes the copyright and license history: the distribution contains no GNU General Public License (GPL) code and may be used in proprietary projects, though optional interfaces to some GNU code exist.