Have a question? Ask Fedora.

Multiple Python interpreters

If you are working on a piece of Python software, you probably want to test it on multiple Python interpreters. On Fedora, that’s easy: all you have to do is use dnf to install what you need.

Fedora includes all Python versions which are supported upstream, a few older ones and possibly a pre-release of a newer one.

At the time of this writing, Fedora has the following Pythons ready for you in the repositories:

CPython 3.11
CPython 3.10
CPython 3.9
CPython 3.8
CPython 3.7
CPython 3.6
CPython 2.7
PyPy 2
PyPy 3.7
PyPy 3.8
PyPy 3.9
MicroPython

Quite a nest, isn’t it? You can install them like this:

$ sudo dnf install python3.9  # to get CPython 3.9
$ sudo dnf install python3.8  # to get CPython 3.8
$ sudo dnf install python3.7  # to get CPython 3.7
$ sudo dnf install python3.6  # to get CPython 3.6
$ sudo dnf install python2.7  # to get CPython 2.7
$ sudo dnf install pypy2 pypy3.9 python3.10  # to get more at once

After that, you can run an interactive console or your script with, let’s say, CPython 3.6:

$ python3.6
Python 3.6.12 (default, Aug 19 2020, 00:00:00) 
[GCC 10.2.1 20200723 (Red Hat 10.2.1-1)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

Warning: For production purposes you should use the python3 package only. Other CPython versions might be unstable or even dangerous (either because they are extremely old or quite the contrary alpha/beta quality) and are intended solely for development.

Getting it and running it all with tox

Tox is tool that helps you test your Python code on multiple Pythons. If you install it on Fedora via the dnf package manager, you’ll automatically get all supported CPythons and PyPys:

$ sudo dnf install tox

If you are not yet familiar with tox, don’t worry. This short example will show you how to start.

Let’s create a directory and a simple Python file in it that will say something nice:

# say.py
print('Fedora is the best OS for Python developers', end='\n\n')

Now we’ll test if it works with all the Pythons, with tox. We’ll create a simple configuration file for tox, tox.ini, in the same directory:

[tox]
envlist = py27,py37,py38,py39,pypy,pypy3
skipsdist = True
[testenv]
commands=python say.py

The envlist directive defines the list of Pythons to test on. Normally, tox assumes you are testing a project with its own setup.py. For the simplicity of this demo, we are not using it, and we need to tell this to tox via the skipsdist option. Finally the commands in the [testenv] section tells tox what commands to run for the test. Normally, that would be python setup.py test, pytest or similar.

With tox.ini in place, run tox in the same directory:

$ tox
[...]
ERROR:   py27: commands failed
  py37: commands succeeded
  py38: commands succeeded
  py39: commands succeeded
ERROR:   pypy: commands failed
  pypy3: commands succeeded

As you can see, there’s something wrong with the script: it only works on Python 3. The full tox output (omitted here) contains the exact error. If you want to support old Python 2 as well, you’ll have to fix it:

# say.py
from __future__ import print_function
print('Fedora is the best OS for Python developers', end='\n\n')

$ tox
[...]
  py27: commands succeeded
  py37: commands succeeded
  py38: commands succeeded
  py39: commands succeeded
  pypy: commands succeeded
  pypy3: commands succeeded
  congratulations :)

If you want to use tox for your projects, you can learn more at the documentation.

Creating virtual environments and installing packages

Fedora only packages Python modules for one current version of python3. For all other interpreters, you will need to install packages from PyPI, the Python Package Index.

The best way is to use Python virtual environments. The invocation to create them differs for different Python versions. Packages installed in a virtual environment are only available once the environment is activated. Here you can see two demos that create a virtual environment in a folder named env and install some package into it.

Python 3 (including PyPy 3)

Recent versions of Python 3 include the venv module, which can create virtual environments. See the PyPI & pip section for details.

$ python3.9 -m venv env  # create the environment
$ source env/bin/activate  # activate it
(env)$ python -m pip install requests  # install a package with pip
...
(env)$ python  # run python from that environment
Python 3.9.0 (default, Oct  6 2020, 00:00:00) 
[GCC 10.2.1 20200723 (Red Hat 10.2.1-1)] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import requests
>>> ...
>>> exit()
(env)$ deactivate  # go back to "normal"

The environment is a directory. If you no longer need it, deactivate it and delete it with rm -rv env.

Python 2.7, PyPy 2

For other Python versions, a tool called virtualenv can create virtual environments:

$ sudo dnf install /usr/bin/virtualenv  # install the necessary tool
$ virtualenv --python /usr/bin/python2.7 env  # create the virtualenv
Running virtualenv with interpreter /usr/bin/python2.7
New python executable in env/bin/python2.7
Also creating executable in env/bin/python
Installing setuptools, pip...done.
$ source env/bin/activate  # activate it
(env)$ python -m pip install requests  # install a package with pip
...
(env)$ python  # run python from that virtualenv
Python 2.7.11 (default, Jul  8 2016, 19:45:00) 
[GCC 5.3.1 20160406 (Red Hat 5.3.1-6)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import requests
>>> ...
>>> exit()
(env)$ deactivate  # go back to "normal"

MicroPython

MicroPython does not support virtual environments. It does have a rudimentary pip replacement called upip, which you can use to install packages that support MicroPython. Run it to find out more:

$ micropython -m upip

Authors: Jarek Prokop, Miro Hrončok, Nick Dirschel, Petr Viktorin, matrixgram

Fedora Developer Portal