Python versions

Like other programming languages, Python evolves with time. New features get added to the language, and other features get deprecated. For more information, see Status of Python versions in the Python Developer’s Guide.

Version	PEP	Released	Security support ends	Status
3.12	PEP 693	02 Oct 2023	Oct 2028	Stable
3.11	PEP 664	03 Oct 2022	Oct 2027	Stable
3.10	PEP 619	04 Oct 2021	Oct 2026	Stable
3.9	PEP 596	05 Oct 2020	Oct 2025	Stable

Consider supporting stable Python versions.

Python versions labeled as stable receive only security fixes. Versions labeled as dev are still receiving bug fixes.

Expect stable versions to be the most commonly used Python versions. Some packages like NumPy drop support for older versions of Python earlier than their end of life (EOL) as outlined in NEP 29.

You can still install an older version from PyPI using pip as your package manager. When pip is used, it downloads and installs the most recent version of the library that supports your version of Python. You can enforce a minimum-required Python version within the setup.py file with this code:

from setuptools import setup

[...]

setup(name="my_package_name", python_requires=">3.9", [...])

This helps pip to know which versions of your library support which versions of Python. You can also impose an upper limit if you’re sure you don’t support certain versions of Python. For example, if you only support Python 3.9 through 3.12, your command would look like this: python_requires='>=3.9, <3.12'.

Verify Python support

The best way to validate whether a Python library supports a version of Python is by Continuous integration. An example GitHub workflow testing Python 3.9 through Python 3.12 on Windows and Linux would start like this:

jobs:
  tests:
    name: "Tests"
    runs-on: ${{ matrix.os }}
    strategy:
      matrix:
        os: [windows-latest, ubuntu-latest]
        python-version: ['3.9', '3.10', '3.11', '3.12']
    steps:
      - name: "Run tests using pytest"
        run: ansys/actions/test-pytest@v4
        with:
          python-version: ${{ matrix.os }}

The workflow would then list the tests to run.