Programming

cibuildwheel 3.0.0 is out, with some very big additions. We’ve added GraalPy, Python 3.14 (and 3.14t) betas, and iOS support! We’ve got several new options: test-sources, test-environment, and (experimental) pyodide-version. We now fully use enable (and PyPy requires using it), and we no longer inject setuptools and wheel in build environments. Defaults have changed, too: build is now the default frontend, manylinux_2_28 is the default manylinux image, with 32-bit linux now being opt-in. We’ve removed support for Python 3.6 and 3.7, we now require 3.11+ to run cibuildwheel itself, and EoL manylinux/musllinux images now need to be fully specified.

We’ve had some fantastic releases of cibuildwheel since my last post over 2.19, so I’ll include a few of the new features from those releases, too. I’ll also note a few of the features being worked on for future releases.

Python π (3.14) beta 3 is out, which means the features are locked in (normally beta 1, but two additions were made exceptionally in beta 3!). The big feature this time around is template strings. There’s also lots more color (including syntax highlighting in the REPL!), remote debugging, deferred evaluation of annotations, and the usual error message and performance improvements. Subintepreters are now accessible without the C-API (finally!), and free-threaded Python is no longer experimental.

Scikit-build-core 0.10 is out, and it is one of the largest releases we’ve produced in terms of new configuration options. It automatically reads your minimum CMake version, you can tell it to read your scikit-build-core minimum-version, and there are settings for many of the advanced things users used to do with scikit-build (classic), like rebuilds or pure Python fallbacks on build failures.

cibuildwheel 2.19 is out, with some very big additions. A new platform, Pyodide, has been added for building WebAssembly wheels. We’ve added CPython 3.13 free-threaded builds, now on all OS’s. And we have an opt-in speed improvement with the build[uv] build-frontend option.

We’ve had some fantastic releases of cibuildwheel since my last post over 2.10, so I’ll include a few of the new features from those releases, too, with a highlight on a larger feature that can use more explaining: inherit for overrides.

Python 3.13 betas are out (Edit: 3.13.0 is out!), which means the features are locked in. For the first time in thirty years, Python has a new, more colorful REPL! There’s also a no-GIL compile-time option (free-threaded), an optional JIT, some new typing features, and better error messages (again).

While it can also do much more, Python is a fantastic language for writing small scripts and utilities with it’s expressive syntax and batteries-included standard library. But what if you need just a bit more? PyPI is one of the best package repositories for any language, and being able to access it without having to write a multi-file library and setting up virtual environments would be a dream - one that is becoming reality. Pipx 1.4.2 has an experimental implementation of the provisionally accepted PEP 723, and I’d like to show it off here, as it’s tremendously useful for simple scripts & utilities. Support is also available in Nox 2024.04.15 and Hatch 1.10.