Feature or enhancement

Ship a static file that describes various aspects of the installation as part of the Python installation.

UPDATE: Proposed asPEP 739, which has been accepted.

Pitch

Shipping such a file would make it much easier to introspect a Python installation without having to run the interpreter. There are many use-cases for this, but some key would be for eg. Python launchers, and cross-compilation tooling.

Information we could provide:

• Python language version
• Python implementation (inc. version)
• Interpreter path
• Standard library path
• Interpreter architecture
• Python ABI
  • Tag (PEP 3149 on Posix)
  • Build flags (debug, trace refs)
• Staticlibpython (available?)
  • Name
  • Location
• Sharedlibpython (available?)
  • Name (standard library)
  • Major-only pin library name (eg.libpython3.so)
  • Location
• C API
  • Hex version
  • Include paths
  • Required C flags
• Supported native module file extensions
  • Interpreter-specific
  • Stable ABI

(incomplete table, just an initial proposal)

Note: This issue specifically targets a descriptor file for the Pythoninstallation, not a Pythonenvironment, so paths are out of scope.

Previous discussion

https://discuss.python.org/t/what-information-is-useful-to-know-statically-about-an-interpreter/25563.

(cc@brettcannon)

Linked PRs

• GH-107956: install a static build description file #108483
• GH-107956: install build-details.json (PEP 739) #130069