Python 3.14 was released today and I caught myself reading the Python 3.14 release notes so figured I’d type up what changes caught my eye.

Installing Python

There are probably better ways to do this. I opted to manually build and install Python 3.14:

./configure --prefix=$HOME/python3.14 && make -j && make install
export PATH="$HOME/python3.14/bin:$PATH"
which python3  # Should print out a path equivalent to $HOME/python3.14/bin/python3

python -m json

This is a nice way to pretty-print JSON (both indentation and color). Previously, one can use python -m json.tool. Now one can simply invoke python -m json. Personally, I missed the release of python -m json.tool, so this release note item helped introduce me to this built-in command line utility. Did you know about python -m json.tool?

Multiple performance improvements

The following areas saw significant performance improvements:

• uuid module
• garbage collection
• import time of a over 20 modules has been improved.
• asyncio subsystem performance improvements

compression.zstd

Python 3.14 now has ZSTD compression support built-in! ZSTD has pretty great characteristics for general use. One less pypi package to grab — hooray!

Attach pdb to a running Python process

Have a run away Python process? Attach pdb to it! In the screenshot, I’ve attached pdb to a toy roguelike that I created last year.

Simplified Exception specifications with PEP 758

Formerly you’d catch multiple exception types using a tuple except (ConnectionRefusedError, TimeoutError):. Now one can drop the parenthesis. It looks cleaner and less busy: except ConnectionRefusedError, TimeoutError:.

Color by default in more places!

Color now appears in argparse generated help messages. In the following picture, check out python -m http.server’s argparse message.

Oh, and python -m json prints in color by default now! (See the picture in the previous section for its colorfulness in action.)

Some other goodies

• pathlib’s Path objects gain copy() and move() methods to simplify file manipulation. Less reliance on shutil.copy and shutil.move.
• many more improvements - see the release notes!

What is your favorite recent Python addition?

I am curious regarding how many packages existed on my system. Then I got to wondering how many are Google projects? How many are Apache projects? Are all packages fully installed?

Get a list of packages into sqlite

First, one needs to create the sqlite3 file. The following bash script generates a .csv file with a header (that’s the echo command on the third line) and a dpkg-query incantation. Then the script prepares a sqlite file and imports the .csv as a SQLite table.

Yup, the .csv generation contains a minute hack. There are no restrictions on where commas may appear in most of these fields printed out using dpkg-query. However, by convention & in practice, I didn’t find any commas. But, you have been warned™.

tempfile=$(mktemp -t debianpackagecsv.XXXXXXXXXXXXX)
{
    echo 'Package,Version,Architecture,Homepage,Status'
    dpkg-query -W -f '"${Package}","${Version}","${Architecture}","${Homepage}","${Status}"\n'
} > "$tempfile"
sqlite3 packages.sqlite3 <<EOF
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS packages;
.mode csv
.import ${tempfile} packages
EOF
rm "$tempfile"
sqlite3 packages.sqlite3 'SELECT COUNT(*) FROM packages'

6143

As of my typing this text on my daily driver, this computer has 6182 packages installed. If the above number does not match 6182, it is probably due to installing more bloat, er, I mean, packages.

All fully installed packages (no config files)

Okay, now are all packages fully installed? This is Debian funny business.

sqlite3 packages.sqlite3 '
SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM packages
WHERE Status = "install ok installed"'

6034

Nope. The numbers don’t match. Something to look into, perhaps for another post.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

Or that’s what I like to remind myself when the personal computer tries to siphon off my time.

Google installed packages

Now let’s see how many packages are installed with Google in the Homepage?

sqlite3 packages.sqlite3 '
SELECT Package,Architecture,Homepage
FROM packages
WHERE Status = "install ok installed" AND Homepage LIKE "%google%";'

Whew! Thanks for scrolling. 69 packages. I didn’t know about zopfli. Apparently zopfli is a C library for compressing data using DEFLATE, gzip, and zlib compression formats. Moreover, zopfli is designed to generate the most compressed DEFLATE, gzip, zlib data. Meaning it’s slow to run but the storage sizes of the compressed data are less than other existing libraries.

Sidenote, apparently libarchive exists on a LOT of computers. Most infosec fans would agree that zlib is already a great supply chain attack vector if only for the sheer number of developers deploying zlib. Libarchive is getting up there! Libarchive ships on modern Windows and macOS. File interchange formats are hard to get right. Could libarchive be ripe for security research?

Apache packages

Similar invocation to the Google query. This time filter on Homepages with “Apache” in their text.

Yup 128 packages. Thanks for scrolling!

I hadn’t heard of ivy before. Upon a cursory flick through ivy’s homepage, it purportedly is the dependency resolver used in Apache Ant. Ant is a build tool not dissimilar to make in that it streamlines taking files and transforming the said files into derived data. One common example: a dependency manager can be employed to track dependencies when compiling a program from source code.

Something to try?

Something to try, for the curious: basic package stats — how many packages do you have installed? More pressingly, consider a stroll through the installed package list. Research a few unfamiliar packages. Do this a lot and you’ll understand virtually every individual software package on your computer.

There’s this cool blog-o-sphere Emacs party going on, with September’s theme of everything about obscure packages. And woops, I’m a day late to the party, so here goes nothing. The idea is to post a weird package that you use but is sort of obscure!

M-x winny/visit-configuration RET and I’ve selected uhhh…

ssh-config-mode

ssh-config-mode Syntax highlighting for your SSH configs, known hosts, and authorized keys files. Nuff said. I have the following line in my Emacs configuration.

(use-package ssh-config-mode :ensure t)

I much appreciate ssh-config-mode because it adds reassuring color to SSH configurations. For example, if I typo include, I’ll see black text instead of blue (until I fix the spelling, then the text turns blue, signaling a correct keyword).

ssh-config-mode is an obscure and helpful package.