Build

This page considers details on building python from source.

Note: The examples in this notebook must be run in the same environment, as they can alter your system’s configuration.

You can download the distribution from the corresponding releases of the official github account.

Check Compile and build section of documentation.

The following cell installs everything needed to build Python, downloads, and extracts the Python version that we’ll use as an example.

apt update &> /dev/null && apt install -y wget gcc make &> /dev/null
[ -d /tmp/installation ] && rm -r /tmp/installation
mkdir /tmp/installation
cd /tmp/installation
wget -q https://github.com/python/cpython/archive/refs/tags/3.8.tar.gz
tar -xzf 3.8.tar.gz
cd cpython-3.8

The resulting Python build may or may not include specific features. This is typically determined during the ./configure step using CLI parameters that start with the word with.

All available options can be checked by running the ./configure --help command.

---

The following cell displays parts of the ./configure --help command, as the full output is too lengthy.

./configure --help | grep with | head -n 20

  --disable-option-checking  ignore unrecognized --enable/--with options
  --enable-ipv6           Enable ipv6 (with ipv4) support
  --with-PACKAGE[=ARG]    use PACKAGE [ARG=yes]
  --without-PACKAGE       do not use PACKAGE (same as --with-PACKAGE=no)
  --with-universal-archs=ARCH
  --with-framework-name=FRAMEWORK
                          with --enable-framework
  --with-cxx-main=<compiler>
                          compile main() and link python executable with C++
  --with-suffix=.exe      set executable suffix
  --with-pydebug          build with Py_DEBUG defined
  --with-trace-refs       enable tracing references for debugging purpose
  --with-assertions       build with C assertions enabled
  --with-lto              Enable Link Time Optimization in any build. Disabled
  --with-hash-algorithm=[fnv|siphash24]
  --with-address-sanitizer
  --with-memory-sanitizer enable MemorySanitizer (msan)
  --with-undefined-behavior-sanitizer
  --with-libs='lib1 ...'  link against additional libs
  --with-system-expat     build pyexpat module using an installed expat

Builtin packages

There is a set of python packages that can only be installed by building python.

Some packages can only be included in the Python build if the corresponding tools are installed on the system. The following table lists some of the required utilities.

Python Module	Purpose	Required System Package(s)
bz2	bzip2 compression	libbz2-dev
lzma	LZMA compression	liblzma-dev (or xz-devel)
ssl	SSL/TLS support	libssl-dev (or openssl-devel)
sqlite3	SQLite support	libsqlite3-dev
_ctypes	C foreign function interface	libffi-dev
tkinter	GUI support with Tk	tk-dev, libtk8.6, libtcl8.6-dev
readline	Command line editing (e.g., input())	libreadline-dev
gdbm	GNU dbm database	libgdbm-dev
dbm.ndbm	Unix ndbm database	libndbm-dev (or part of libc6-dev)
_uuid	UUID support	uuid-dev
zlib	Compression support	zlib1g-dev
_decimal	Decimal floating point	libmpdec-dev
_sqlite3	SQLite bindings	libsqlite3-dev
_ssl	SSL module	libssl-dev
_hashlib	Hashing (SHA, MD5)	libssl-dev
_tkinter	GUI support	tk-dev, tcl-dev
_curses	Terminal handling	libncursesw5-dev
_bz2	bzip2 support	libbz2-dev
_lzma	xz compression	liblzma-dev
termios, fcntl, etc.	Terminal and system call interfaces	Usually always built on Unix

Here are the parameters required for package installation, the absence of which caused some problems in my practice:

• --with-ensurepip: garantees that python will have the ensurepip package, which installes pip in python and possble virtual environments.

• --with-ssl-default-sites=openssl to include the ssl module in the build.