Release Date: Nov. 26, 2020

This is the release candidate of the first maintenance release of Python 3.9

Python 3.9.1rc1 is the newest major release of the Python programming language, and it contains many new features and optimizations. We've made 240 changes since 3.9.0 which is a significant amount. To compare, 3.8.1rc1 only saw 168 commits since 3.8.0.

Installer news

Will launch the Homebrew-installed Python 3 interpreter. If the Homebrew version of Python 2 is installed then pip2 will point to Python 2. If the Homebrew version of Python 3 is installed then pip will point to Python 3. The rest of the guide will assume that python references Python 3.

On Mac OS X Mojave python stands for python of version 2.7 and python3 for python of version 3. The same is pip and pip3. So, to upgrade pip for python 3 do this: $ sudo pip3 install -upgrade pip.
Sep 14, 2015 However my pip for Python 2.7 working properly as well as Python 3.5. The Python build process couldn't find the OS X SDK headers while it was building extension.
However my pip for Python 2.7 working properly as well as Python 3.5. The Python build process couldn't find the OS X SDK headers while it was building extension.

3.9.1rc1 is the first version of Python to support macOS 11 Big Sur. With Xcode 11 and later it is now possible to build “Universal 2” binaries which work on Apple Silicon. We are providing such an installer as the macosx11.0 variant. This installer can be deployed back to older versions, tested down to OS X 10.9. As we are waiting for an updated version of pip, please consider the macosx11.0 installer experimental.

This work would not have been possible without the effort of Ronald Oussoren, Ned Deily, and Lawrence D’Anna from Apple. Thank you!

This is the first version of Python to default to the 64-bit installer on Windows. The installer now also actively disallows installation on Windows 7. Python 3.9 is incompatible with this unsupported version of Windows.

Major new features of the 3.9 series, compared to 3.8

Some of the new major new features and changes in Python 3.9 are:

PEP 573, Module State Access from C Extension Methods
PEP 584, Union Operators in dict
PEP 585, Type Hinting Generics In Standard Collections
PEP 593, Flexible function and variable annotations
PEP 602, Python adopts a stable annual release cadence
PEP 614, Relaxing Grammar Restrictions On Decorators
PEP 615, Support for the IANA Time Zone Database in the Standard Library
PEP 616, String methods to remove prefixes and suffixes
PEP 617, New PEG parser for CPython
BPO 38379, garbage collection does not block on resurrected objects;
BPO 38692, os.pidfd_open added that allows process management without races and signals;
BPO 39926, Unicode support updated to version 13.0.0;
BPO 1635741, when Python is initialized multiple times in the same process, it does not leak memory anymore;
A number of Python builtins (range, tuple, set, frozenset, list, dict) are now sped up using PEP 590 vectorcall;
A number of Python modules (_abc, audioop, _bz2, _codecs, _contextvars, _crypt, _functools, _json, _locale, operator, resource, time, _weakref) now use multiphase initialization as defined by PEP 489;
A number of standard library modules (audioop, ast, grp, _hashlib, pwd, _posixsubprocess, random, select, struct, termios, zlib) are now using the stable ABI defined by PEP 384.

You can find a more comprehensive list in this release's 'What's New' document.

More resources

PEP 596, 3.9 Release Schedule
Report bugs at https://bugs.python.org.
Help fund Python and its community.

And now for something completely different

Loothesom: (Eric Idle) Here at Lughtborrow are the five young men chosen last week to be eaten by a crocodile for Britain this summer. Obviously, the most important part of the event is the opening 60 yard sprint towards the crocs. And twenty-two year old Nottingham schoolteacher Gavin Watterlow is rated by some pundits not only the fastest but also the tastiest British morsel since Barry Gordon got a bronze at Helsinki. In charge of the team is Sergeant Major Harold Duke.
Duke: (Terry Jones) Aww, well, you not only got to get in that pit first, you gotta get EATEN first. When you land in front of your croc, and 'e opens his mouth, I wanna see you right in there. Rub your 'ead up against 'is taste buds. And when those teeth bite into your flesh, use the purchase to thrust yourself DOWN his throat..
Loothesom: Duke's trained every British team since 1928, and it's his blend of gymnastic knowhow, reptilian expertise and culinary skill that's turned many an un-appetizing novice into a crocodilic banquet.
Duke: Well, our chefs have been experimenting for many years to find a sauce most likely to tempt the crocodile. In the past, we've concentrated on a fish based sauce, but this year, we are reverting to a simple bernaise.

Version	Operating System	Description	MD5 Sum	File Size	GPG
Gzipped source tarball	Source release	44eaec341c4224e08007336987e4c0dd	25369430	SIG
XZ compressed source tarball	Source release	bb5950be70e8271d09a120158e7e425d	18871700	SIG
macOS 64-bit installer	Mac OS X	for OS X 10.9 and later	8ed47729007ff3cf59e1f6c90c50a714	29800847	SIG
macOS 64-bit universal2 installer	Mac OS X	for OS X 10.9 and later, including macOS 11 Big Sur on Apple Silicon (experimental)	3ee2730afd97ebbddb6b3dc9ac619f3d	37447936	SIG
Windows embeddable package (32-bit)	Windows	798b3f9a6f04664dc5db8251a6fb18c2	7571121	SIG
Windows embeddable package (64-bit)	Windows	43007f492788cc118093f7f178099912	8404170	SIG
Windows help file	Windows	4e7db25c3cfdbd223824224b5aa6e700	8785580	SIG
Windows installer (32-bit)	Windows	db66fab666fe331eae12949364b72350	27125056	SIG
Windows installer (64-bit)	Windows	Recommended	7444c283d8a94823beb52611c091a398	28207056	SIG

Question or issue on macOS:

Made the upgrade to Mac OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and get now the following error when trying to call $ pip:

Update: Tried to reinstall by doing the install procedure again (with http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/installing.html#using-the-installer and easy_install), but didn’t work, got the same error.

Tried now the following: Calling $ sudo pip and the above error disappears. Strange is, that the directories which could not befound in the above error message point to /System/Library/… while the python installation is (new ?) to find in /Library/Frameworks/.:

Any idea how to get rid of the sudo?

How to solve this problem?

Solution no. 1:

Use easy_install to update your pip to the latest version:

sudo easy_install -U pip

Also make sure you have the lastest XCode installed (ver 4.4) with Command Line Tools.

Solution no. 2:

This works for me

Solution no. 3:

I had a similar error except that sudo pip did not work either. I am using a “brew” installation of python (which is symlinked to /usr/local/bin) and found that the problem was that the shebangs in the pip and easy_install files were hardcoded to #!/usr/bin/python instead of #!/usr/local/bin/python, and so was using the system python version instead of the brew version.

Cheers,
Tom

Solution no. 4:

I actually couldn’t do what was suggested. I instead had to execute:

Then I was able to install the ldap module.

Solution no. 5:

I tried all the answers here, from reinstall easy_install to install a new python version, nothing worked for me.

What I did

Os X Pip For Python 3