Building Python 3.x

Building Python 3.12.x

Below versions of Python are available in respective distributions at the time of creation of these build instructions:

• RHEL (7.8, 7.9) have 3.6.8
• RHEL (8.6, 8.8, 8.9, 9.0, 9.2, 9.3) have 3.11.5
• SLES 12 SP5 has 3.6.15
• SLES 15 SP5 has 3.11.5
• Ubuntu 20.04 has 3.9.5
• Ubuntu 22.04 has 3.10.6
• Ubuntu 23.10 has 3.11.4

The instructions provided below specify the steps to build Python version 3.12.2 on Linux on IBM Z for following distributions:

• RHEL (7.8, 7.9, 8.6, 8.8, 8.9, 9.0, 9.2, 9.3)
• SLES (12 SP5, 15 SP5)
• Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04, 23.10)

General Notes:

• When following the steps below please use a standard permission user unless otherwise specified.
• A directory /<source_root>/ will be referred to in these instructions, this is a temporary writable directory anywhere you'd like to place it.

Step 1: Build and Install Python 3.12.x

1.1) Build using script

If you want to build Python using manual steps, go to STEP 1.2.

Use the following commands to build Python using the build script. Please make sure you have wget installed.

wget -q https://raw.githubusercontent.com/linux-on-ibm-z/scripts/master/Python3/3.12.2/build_python3.sh

# Build Python
bash build_python3.sh  [Provide -t option for executing build with tests] 

If the build completes successfully, go to STEP 1.7. In case of error, check logs for more details or go to STEP 1.2 to follow manual build steps.

1.2) Install dependencies

export SOURCE_ROOT=/<source_root>/

• RHEL (7.8, 7.9)

  sudo yum install -y bzip2-devel gdbm-devel libdb-devel libffi-devel libuuid-devel make ncurses-devel readline-devel sqlite-devel tar tk-devel wget xz xz-devel zlib-devel
  
  sudo yum install -y devtoolset-11-gcc-c++
  source /opt/rh/devtoolset-11/enable

• RHEL (8.6, 8.8, 8.9, 9.0, 9.2, 9.3)

  sudo yum install -y bzip2-devel gcc gcc-c++ gdbm-devel libdb-devel libffi-devel libnsl2-devel libuuid-devel make ncurses ncurses-devel openssl openssl-devel readline-devel sqlite-devel tar tk-devel wget xz zlib-devel glibc-langpack-en diffutils xz-devel

• SLES 12 SP5

  sudo zypper install -y gawk gcc gcc-c++ gdbm-devel libbz2-devel libdb-4_8-devel libffi48-devel libuuid-devel make ncurses-devel readline-devel sqlite3-devel tar tk-devel wget xz-devel zlib-devel gzip

• SLES 15 SP5

  sudo zypper install -y gawk gcc gcc-c++ gdbm-devel libbz2-devel libdb-4_8-devel libffi-devel libnsl-devel libopenssl-devel libuuid-devel make ncurses-devel readline-devel sqlite3-devel tar tk-devel wget xz-devel zlib-devel gzip timezone

• Ubuntu (20.04, 22.04, 23.10)

  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get install -y gcc g++ libbz2-dev libdb-dev libffi-dev libgdbm-dev liblzma-dev libncurses-dev libreadline-dev libsqlite3-dev libssl-dev make tar tk-dev uuid-dev wget xz-utils zlib1g-dev 

1.3) Build additional dependencies

• Build and install OpenSSL from source (SLES 12 SP5 and RHEL 7.x only)

    cd $SOURCE_ROOT
    wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-1.1.1w.tar.gz --no-check-certificate
    tar -xzf openssl-1.1.1w.tar.gz
    cd openssl-1.1.1w
    ./config --prefix=/usr/local --openssldir=/usr/local
    make
    sudo make install
    sudo ldconfig /usr/local/lib64
    export PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
  
    export LDFLAGS="-L/usr/local/lib/ -L/usr/local/lib64/"
    export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib/:/usr/local/lib64/"
    export CPPFLAGS="-I/usr/local/include/ -I/usr/local/include/openssl"
  
  

1.4) Download source code

cd $SOURCE_ROOT
wget https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.12.2/Python-3.12.2.tgz
tar -xzf Python-3.12.2.tgz

1.5) Configure the build

Skipping the prefix will result in installing Python in default location /usr/local.

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/Python-3.12.2
./configure --prefix=<build-location>

For instance,

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/Python-3.12.2
./configure --prefix=/usr/local

1.6) Build the source and install the binaries

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/Python-3.12.2
make
sudo make install

sudo cp -f /etc/python3start /etc/pythonstart  #Only on SLES 12 SP5 if file `/etc/pythonstart` does not exist

1.7) Verify Python3 version

python3 -V

The output should be:

Python 3.12.2

Step 2: Testing (Optional)

2.1) Run the functional verification test suites

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/Python-3.12.2

Run the test suites

make test

2.2) Make verbose test suite

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/Python-3.12.2
make test TESTOPTS="-v test_<suite_name>"

For instance,

cd $SOURCE_ROOT/Python-3.12.2
make test TESTOPTS="-v test_pdb"

Note: Following python test cases have been observed to fail intermittently. They should pass on rerun.

• test_cppext
• test_tools

References:

• Release notes for Python 3.12.2
• https://github.com/python/cpython#testing
• https://www.python.org