Gaming Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version #f2b2

Chapter 3. Shared Dependencies

Python-3.13.2

Introduction to Python 3

The Python 3 package contains the Python development environment. This is useful for object-oriented programming, writing scripts, prototyping large programs or developing entire applications.

[Note]

Note

Python 3 was installed in LFS. The only reason to rebuild it here is if SQLite-3.49.1 is installed or if upgrading.

[Important]

Important

If upgrading to a new Python-3 minor version (for example, from Python-3.11.x to Python-3.12.0), you will need to reinstall any Python3 modules you have installed. You should also reinstall packages that generate Python3 modules.

Before you upgrade, you can get a list of modules installed with pip3 list. The list may be incomplete as some Python modules are not installed with pip3, for example the xcbgen module installed by xcb-proto-1.17.0. Use ls /usr/lib/python3.minor/site-packages for a comprehensive list.

The Python modules from LFS will also have to be reinstalled: flit-core, wheel, setuptools, meson, MarkupSafe, and Jinja2.

Package Information

Python 3 Dependencies

Recommended

SQLite-3.49.1 (required if building Firefox or Thunderbird)

Installation of Python 3

Install Python 3 by running the following commands: 

CXX="/usr/bin/g++"               \
./configure --prefix=/usr        \
            --enable-shared      \
            --with-system-expat  \
            --enable-optimizations &&
make

Now, as the root user: 

make install

Command Explanations

CXX="/usr/bin/g++" ./configure ...: Avoid an annoying message during configuration.

--with-system-expat: This switch enables linking against the system version of Expat.

--enable-optimizations: This switch enables stable, but expensive, optimizations.

--with-lto: This optional switch enables thick Link Time Optimization. Unusually, it creates a much larger /usr/lib/python3.13/config-3.13-<arch>-linux-gnu/libpython3.13.a with a small increase in the time to compile Python. Run-time results do not appear to show any benefit from doing this.

Contents

Installed Programs: 2to3 (symlink) and 2to3-3.13, idle3 (symlink) and idle3.13, pip3 and pip3.13, pydoc3 (symlink) and pydoc3.13, python3 (symlink) and python3.13, and python3-config (symlink) and python3.13-config
Installed Libraries: libpython3.13.so and libpython3.so
Installed Directories: /usr/include/python3.13 and /usr/lib/python3.13

Short Descriptions

idle3

is a wrapper script that opens a Python aware GUI editor. For this script to run, you must have installed Tk before Python so that the Tkinter Python module is built

pydoc3

is the Python documentation tool

python3

is an interpreted, interactive, object-oriented programming language

python3.13

is a version-specific name for the python program