Merge pull request #267 from danigm/python313

Create 2024-09-11-python313.md

_posts/2024/2024-09-11-python313.md

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+---
+author: Daniel García Moreno
+date: 2024-09-11 08:00:00+20:00
+layout: post
+license: CC-BY-SA-3.0
+slug: python313
+title: Python 3.13, with and without GIL
+image: /wp-content/uploads/2020/09/pythonlogo.png
+categories:
+- Announcements
+- Tumbleweed
+- openSUSE
+tags:
+- Python
+- openSUSE
+- SUSE
+- Developers
+- Open Source
+---
+
+Python 3.13 RC2 is now available in Tumbleweed. This new version of
+the Python interpreter will be released in October 2024.
+
+There's [a lot of changes](https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3130rc2/)
+and new features in 3.13, but we're also bringing exiting experimental
+features in Tumbleweed.
+
+### Experimental JIT compiler
+
+The default (`python313`) build has the flag
+`--enable-experimental-jit=yes-off`. This means that if you want to
+use this [experimental JIT](https://docs.python.org/3.13/whatsnew/3.13.html#an-experimental-just-in-time-jit-compiler)
+you can enable with a environment variable:
+
+```
+$ PYTHON_JIT=1 python313
+```
+
+You can find more information about the JIT compiler and how can this
+improve the performance in the
+[PEP-744](https://peps.python.org/pep-0744/).
+
+### Free threaded CPython (no GIL)
+
+With this new version of Python interpreter there's an option to build
+without the famous [Global Interpreter Lock](https://docs.python.org/3.13/whatsnew/3.13.html#free-threaded-cpython),
+aka GIL. This is a really experimental feature, but why not have this
+on Tumbleweed? So we decided to build also this new version with a new
+package `python313-nogil`.
+
+This new package is an isolated interpreter, so you can install
+without conflicts with `python313`. The package is building with the
+`--disable-gil` option and it provides the `/usr/bin/python3.13t`
+binary. It uses by default `/usr/lib/python3.13t/site-packages` for
+third-party libs, so with the default configuration it won't use any
+python 3.13 module.
+
+This means that now you can use `threading.Thread` in the Python
+interpreter and it will be actual threads, so at the end using threads
+with `python3.13t` interpreter should be a lot faster.
+
+There's no packages for this interpreter in Tumbleweed, at this
+moment. So if you want to use third party libraries you should use
+virtualenv and pip for that:
+
+```
+$ python3.13t -m venv free-threaded-env
+$ source free-threaded-env/bin/activate
+(free-threaded-env) $ pip install requests
+(free-threaded-env) $ python3
+Python 3.13.0rc2 experimental free-threading build (main, Sep 07 2024, 16:06:06) [GCC] on linux
+Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
+>>> import sys; sys._is_gil_enabled()
+False
+```