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Current Python Versions

Contents

  • Lifecycle of cPython
  • Python Interpreters
  • AWS Lambda
  • Distribution Defaults
  • Python Download Statistics
  • pipenv download statistics
  • Google Trends
  • See also

Which Python versions should my library support?

For which version should I develop my web service / application?

For the second question, I like to never take a x.y.0 version. Let them get the patches out first.

Lifecycle of cPython

I've asked which CPython versions get support right now on SO, and it got heavily downvoted. But I got the answer:

Python Version PEP First Release End-of-life
3.8 PEP 569 2019-10-14 2024-10
3.7 PEP 537 2018-06-27 2023-06-27
3.6 PEP 494 2016-12-23 2021-12-23
3.5 PEP 478 2015-09-13 2020-09-13

Python Interpreters

CPython is by far the most commonly used interpreter, but there are others. PyPy for example. And currently only supports Python 3.6, although development of Python 3.9 has already started (see pypy.org for the latest state).

So if you want to allow the usage of other interpreters, you might need to use older Python versions.

AWS Lambda

Documentation states:

Python Version boto3 botocore Operating System
Python 3.8 boto3-1.10.34 botocore-1.13.34 Amazon Linux 2
Python 3.8 boto3-1.10.34 botocore-1.13.34 Amazon Linux
Python 3.8 boto3-1.10.34 botocore-1.13.34 Amazon Linux
Python 2.7 boto3-1.10.34 botocore-1.13.34 Amazon Linux

Distribution Defaults

Linux distributions ship with Python. The default of those influences a lot what is used. I've used the debian package search and the Ubuntu package search to get the numbers:

Operating System Package "python" Package "python3"
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.7.x 3.6.x
Ubuntu 19.04 2.7.x 3.7.x
Ubuntu 19.10 2.7.x 3.7.x
Debian (jessie) 2.7.x 3.4.x
Debian (stretch) 2.7.x 3.5.x
Debian (buster) 2.7.x 3.7.x
Debian (bullseye) 2.7.x 3.7.x
Debian (sid) 2.7.x 3.7.x

Python Download Statistics

I'm trying to get more recent data, but here you see subtotals for some time before May 2019:

Python Version Sum of Hits % of Hits
3.7.x 15,519,728 58.36%
3.6.x 5,616,969 21.12%
2.7.x 4,112,428 15.46%
3.5.x 1,187,840 4.47%
3.8.x 156,111 0.59%
Grand Total 26,593,076 100%

pipenv download statistics

I'm still trying to get those.

Google Trends

See also

  • Jetbrains: Python, 2019.
  • w3techs.com: Usage statistics of Python Version 3 for websites
  • Stackoverflow: python runtime version statistics, 2016.

Published

Feb 12, 2020
by Martin Thoma

Category

Code

Tags

  • Python 138

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