Python 3.13 brings major new features compared to Python 3.12 and one of them is free-threaded mode, which disables the Global Interpreter Lock, allowing threads to run more concurrently.

The GIL will be disabled when you configure the Python with the --disable-gil option which is nothing but a build configuration (free threading build) at the time of installation.

This will allow optionally enabling and disabling GIL using the environment variable PYTHON_GIL which can be set to 1 and 0 respectively.

It will also provide a command-line option -X gil which can also be set to 0 (disable) and 1 (enable).

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[–] drspod@lemmy.ml 21 points 3 months ago

This is huge news. Great work to the contributors involved in making this happen.

[–] Midnitte@beehaw.org 9 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I learned relatedly that there's a page to track free threaded support for (non-pure python) packages (thanks PythonBytes).

Really cool to see this progressing so steadily.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago

Wake me up when pyside is on that list. I've been waiting for this day for a decade...

[–] raman_klogius@ani.social 1 points 3 months ago

what kind of a reptile is python that it still have GILs until recently?

[–] ayyy@sh.itjust.works -3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

This doesn’t really jive with my understanding of semantic versioning/semver but I guess versioning is very challenging and political in the Pythonverse.

[–] jim@programming.dev 8 points 3 months ago

Python does not follow semver.

https://docs.python.org/3/faq/general.html#how-does-the-python-version-numbering-scheme-work