Python

This article is a stub. You can help by expanding it.

Python is a cross-platform interpreted programming language. Python powers Portage, eselect, equery, and many other tools in Gentoo.|

Resources

Home

Wikipedia

Official documentation

Python is a cross-platform interpreted programming language. Python powers Portage, eselect, equery, and many other tools in Gentoo.

Installation

Since Python is so integral to Gentoo there is little chance it is not installed. Doing so would be like removing the heart from Gentoo. There is occasion where Python must be recompiled in order to add new features or to upgrade.

USE flags

USE flags for dev-lang/python Freethreading (no-GIL) version of Python programming language

`+ensurepip`	Install the ensurepip module that uses bundled wheels to bootstrap pip and setuptools (if disabled, it will be only possible to use venv `--without-pip`)
`+ncurses`	Add ncurses support (console display library)
`+readline`	Enable support for libreadline, a GNU line-editing library that almost everyone wants
`+sqlite`	Add support for sqlite - embedded sql database
`+ssl`	Add support for SSL/TLS connections (Secure Socket Layer / Transport Layer Security)
`+xml`	Add support for XML files
`berkdb`	Add support for sys-libs/db (Berkeley DB)
`bluetooth`	Build Bluetooth protocol support in socket module
`build`	!!internal use only!! DO NOT SET THIS FLAG YOURSELF!, used for creating build images and the first half of bootstrapping [make stage1]
`debug`	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces
`examples`	Install examples, usually source code
`gdbm`	Add support for sys-libs/gdbm (GNU database libraries)
`jit`	Enable experimental Just-In-Time compilation support.
`libedit`	Link readline extension against dev-libs/libedit instead of sys-libs/readline
`pgo`	Optimize the build using Profile Guided Optimization (PGO) by running Python's test suite and collecting statistics based on its performance. This will take longer to build.
`test`	Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to run tests (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be toggled independently)
`tk`	Add support for Tk GUI toolkit
`valgrind`	Disable pymalloc when running under dev-debug/valgrind is detected (may incur minor performance penalty even when valgrind is not used)
`verify-sig`	Verify upstream signatures on distfiles
`wininst`	Install Windows executables required to create an executable installer for MS Windows

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2025-05-01 11:36 More information about USE flags

Emerge

Python is slotted, which means there is more than one version Python that can be installed on a Gentoo system at the same time. Select the version to install by using an : (colon) and the package atom followed by one of the slot numbers:

For example, to install Python 3.4:

root #emerge --ask dev-lang/python:3.4

Configuration

Setting the active interpreter

The active Python interpreter can be set using the eselect python command. First list the available interpreters using list:

root #eselect python list

Select the desired interpreter using set. In this example the second option was chosen:

root #eselect python set 2

Version upgrade

The old python-updater is no longer used.

Before starting ensure that the system is up to date:

root #emerge --ask --update --newuse --deep @world

To make system packages be rebuilt using the new Python implementation update the PYTHON_TARGETS and PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET variables in make.conf. For example, when updating from Python 3.4 to 3.5:

FILE /etc/portage/make.conf

PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_5"
PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_5"

Then update the system again using the --changed-use --deep options to ensure packages using the new Python implementation are

root #emerge --ask --changed-use --deep @world

You may be asked to update any remaining python_targets_python3_4 USE flags as well.

Note that many popular packages such as Docker still require PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET variable to be set to python2_7 due to various dependencies such as app-text/asciidoc which do not support Python 3.x.

Once the upgrade has completed, old Python implementations can be removed from the system using:

root #emerge --ask --depclean dev-lang/python

After depclean eselect python list will still show old python versions if they were previously selected, to remove these entries run the following command:

root #eselect python cleanup

Usage

Invocation

A specific version of the Python interpreter can be invoked from the command-line directly by running:

user $python2.7

Or

user $python3.4

To execute a script with Python 2.x use the following header:

FILE /usr/local/bin/repo

#!/usr/bin/env python2
...