Python

Introduction

Python is an interpreted programming language, created by Guido van Rossum in 1991. It is used for a wide range of tasks from basic scripting to full-fledged web applications.

Warning:

Python applications belong in your home directory, not in your document root.

Versions

Release Types

Each release branch of Python is fully supported for five years beginning with its initial stable release. For more details see our update policy.

Standard version

At the moment we only provide version 3.14

Update Policy

We update all versions of Python on a regular basis. Once the security support ends, the branch reaches its end of life, is no longer supported and will be removed from our servers.

Branch	State	Security Support Until
3.14	Bug fixes	2030-10

Connection to webserver

In order to make your application accessable from the outside, you need to connect it to the webserver, using a web backend.

Please note that your application must listen on the IP 0.0.0.0. You can choose any port between 1024 and 65535.

pip

pip is Python's package manager, used to install and manage additional packages. You can only install software to your home directory, so please always use the --user option when running pip.

[isabell@moondust ~]$ pip install --user requests

Breaking system packages

We already configured pip to allow installing packages alongside the ones we provide (--break-system-packages), so you don't need to pass this flag yourself.

pipx

pipx installs Python command line applications into their own isolated environment, so their dependencies don't clash with each other or with packages you installed with pip. Use it instead of pip install --user for anything you run as a command, e.g. httpie or black:

[isabell@moondust ~]$ pipx install httpie

The resulting command (http in this example) is installed to ~/.local/bin, which is already on your $PATH.

Virtual environments

For your own projects, use a virtual environment to keep their dependencies isolated from each other and from the packages we provide:

[isabell@moondust ~]$ python3 -m venv ~/my-project/venv
[isabell@moondust ~]$ source ~/my-project/venv/bin/activate
(venv) [isabell@moondust ~]$ pip install requests

While the virtual environment is active, pip and python3 refer to the ones inside it. Use deactivate to leave it again.