The aim of this project is to provide a Python 3.12 backport to Debian bookworm. Packages are of course much better manageable than compiling the source from scratch. In my opinion it is also more manageable than using pyenv. By using my packages you will also be sure to get the latest patches (on a best effort basis).
Motivation for this project was the removal of Python 3.11 support in Home Assistant 2024.4. Debian bookworm doesn't have Python 3.12 however.
The scope of this project is limited to backporting just Python 3.12 itself. So no defaults (which provide virtual packages so python3 get's automatically linked to python3.12) and no precompiled pip-packages or wheels besides pip itself. Therefore it can coexist with your regular Python (3.11) installation without any interference and still being simple to maintain. It's main use is for in virtual environments where you can use pip to compile and install any packages you desire. It does provide all the packages and dependencies needed to create a Python 3.12 virtual environment.
Because the version of pip present in Debian 12 bookworm isn't compatible with Python 3.12, I've included pip inside the Python package. Normally pip on Debian is inside the python3-pip package, but backporting that would clash with an existing pip installation. This is the easiest solution for now.
Packages can be downloaded from my repository at deb.pascalroeleven.nl. First you should also add my PGP (which you can get from my website via https) to APT's sources keyring:
wget -qO- https://pascalroeleven.nl/deb-pascalroeleven.gpg | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/deb-pascalroeleven.gpgNow you can add my repository by adding a file with my repository to the sources.list.d directory:
cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pascalroeleven.sources
Types: deb
URIs: http://deb.pascalroeleven.nl/python3.12
Suites: bookworm-backports
Components: main
Signed-By: /etc/apt/keyrings/deb-pascalroeleven.gpg
EOFAfter running apt update you should now be able to install Python 3.12 related packages.
Packages are built using Github Actions along with a file containing the checksums of all packages. Therefore, you can compare the checksums of the packages in the repository with the checksums in Github Actions and trace the entire process (up to 90 days after the build after which the artifacts and logs get removed). This way, if you trust the Github Actions build system, you can be sure that the packages I provide are actually built using the instructions in this repo.
Currently there is support for amd64, arm64 and armhf architectures. The amd64 packages are build natively while the arm64 and armhf packages are crossbuilt. Testing is not possible while crossbuilding, so these packages did not undergo the same amount of testing as usual Debian packages do.
If you want to build the packages yourself, you can use the Dockerfile and the patches in this repository. Patches will be applied by the Dockerfile. Buildkit is required.
Packages are built using the buildx bake command. The following targets are supported: native, crossbuild, crossbuild-armhf and crossbuild-arm64. Supplying no target or default will build all packages. Build artifacts are extracted to the artifacts folder (will be created automatically).
docker buildx bake defaultYou can supply the following environment variables to modify the changelog: NAME, EMAIL and CHANGE (for an additional message in the changelog besides "Rebuild for bookworm-backports").
NAME="James Smith" EMAIL="jamessmith@example.org" CHANGE="Fixed some bug somewhere" docker buildx bake defaultBuilding natively takes about 2 hours on a modern decent PC because of the extensive testing. Cross building takes about 30 minutes (but uses native binaries so requires the extra 2 hours the first time).