Notice: While JavaScript is not essential for this website, your interaction with the content will be limited. Please turn JavaScript on for the full experience.

Python 3.8.4

Release Date: July 13, 2020

This is the fourth maintenance release of Python 3.8

Note: The release you're looking at is Python 3.8.4, a bugfix release for the legacy 3.8 series. Python 3.11 is now the latest feature release series of Python 3. Get the latest release of 3.11.x here.

Major new features of the 3.8 series, compared to 3.7

  • PEP 572, Assignment expressions
  • PEP 570, Positional-only arguments
  • PEP 587, Python Initialization Configuration (improved embedding)
  • PEP 590, Vectorcall: a fast calling protocol for CPython
  • PEP 578, Runtime audit hooks
  • PEP 574, Pickle protocol 5 with out-of-band data
  • Typing-related: PEP 591 (Final qualifier), PEP 586 (Literal types), and PEP 589 (TypedDict)
  • Parallel filesystem cache for compiled bytecode
  • Debug builds share ABI as release builds
  • f-strings support a handy = specifier for debugging
  • continue is now legal in finally: blocks
  • on Windows, the default asyncio event loop is now ProactorEventLoop
  • on macOS, the spawn start method is now used by default in multiprocessing
  • multiprocessing can now use shared memory segments to avoid pickling costs between processes
  • typed_ast is merged back to CPython
  • LOAD_GLOBAL is now 40% faster
  • pickle now uses Protocol 4 by default, improving performance

There are many other interesting changes, please consult the "What's New" page in the documentation for a full list.

More resources

Windows users

  • The binaries for AMD64 will also work on processors that implement the Intel 64 architecture. (Also known as the "x64" architecture, and formerly known as both "EM64T" and "x86-64".)
  • There are now "web-based" installers for Windows platforms; the installer will download the needed software components at installation time.
  • There are redistributable zip files containing the Windows builds, making it easy to redistribute Python as part of another software package. Please see the documentation regarding Embedded Distribution for more information.

macOS users

  • For Python 3.8, we provide one installer: 64-bit-only that works on macOS 10.9 (Mavericks) and later systems.
  • Please read the "Important Information" displayed during installation for information about SSL/TLS certificate validation and the running the "Install Certificates.command".

And now for something completely different

Michael Palin: Hello, good evening and welcome to another edition of Blood, Devastation, Death War and Horror, and later on we'll be meeting a man who does gardening. But first on the show we've got a man who speaks entirely in anagrams.
Palin: I believe you're working on an anagram version of Shakespeare?
Eric Idle: Sey, sey - taht si crreoct, er - ta the mnemot I'm wroking on 'The Mating of the Wersh'.
Palin: Have you done 'Hamlet'?
Idle: 'Thamle'. 'Be ot or bot ne ot, tath is the nestquoi.'
Palin: And what is your next project?
Idle: 'Ring Kichard the Thrid'.
Palin: I'm sorry?
Idle: 'A shroe! A shroe! My dingkom for a shroe!'
Palin: Ah, Ring Kichard, yes... but surely that's not an anagram, that's a spoonerism.
Idle: (offended) If you're going to split hairs, I'm going to piss off.

Full Changelog

Files

Version Operating System Description MD5 Sum File Size GPG
Gzipped source tarball Source release 387e63fe42c40a29e3408ce231315516 23.0 MB SIG
XZ compressed source tarball Source release e16df33cd7b58702e57e137f8f5d13e7 17.2 MB SIG
macOS 64-bit installer macOS for OS X 10.9 and later 8464bc5341d3444b2ccad001d88b752b 28.8 MB SIG
Windows help file Windows bf7942cdd74f34aa4f485730a714cc47 8.1 MB SIG
Windows x86 embeddable zip file Windows 910c307f58282aaa88a2e9df38083ed2 7.0 MB SIG
Windows x86 executable installer Windows c3d71a80f518cfba4d038de53bca2734 25.5 MB SIG
Windows x86 web-based installer Windows 075a93add0ac3d070b113f71442ace37 1.3 MB SIG
Windows x86-64 embeddable zip file Windows for AMD64/EM64T/x64 c68f60422a0e43dabf54b84a0e92ed6a 7.8 MB SIG
Windows x86-64 executable installer Windows for AMD64/EM64T/x64 12297fb08088d1002f7e93a93fd779c6 26.6 MB SIG
Windows x86-64 web-based installer Windows for AMD64/EM64T/x64 7c382afb4d8faa0a82973e44caf02949 1.3 MB SIG