This document is for an old version of Python that is no longer supported. You should upgrade and read the Python documentation for the current stable release. Show © Copyright 1990-2020, Python Software Foundation. Edit this page Toggle table of contents sidebar This guide is a comprehensive resource for contributing to Python – for both new and experienced contributors. It is maintained by the same community that maintains Python. We welcome your contributions to Python! Quick Reference#Here are the basic steps needed to get set up and contribute a patch. This is meant as a checklist, once you know the basics. For complete instructions please see the setup guide.
Note First time contributors will need to sign the Contributor Licensing Agreement (CLA) as described in the Licensing section of this guide. Quick Links#Here are some links that you probably will reference frequently while contributing to Python:
Status of Python branches#Moved to Status of Python Versions Contributing#We encourage everyone to contribute to Python and that’s why we have put up this developer’s guide. If you still have questions after reviewing the material in this guide, then the Core Python Mentorship group is available to help guide new contributors through the process. A number of individuals from the Python community have contributed to a series of excellent guides at Open Source Guides. Core developers and contributors alike will find the following guides useful:
Guide for contributing to Python: We recommend that the documents in this guide be read as needed. You can stop where you feel comfortable and begin contributing immediately without reading and understanding these documents all at once. If you do choose to skip around within the documentation, be aware that it is written assuming preceding documentation has been read so you may find it necessary to backtrack to fill in missing concepts and terminology. Proposing changes to Python itself#Improving Python’s code, documentation and tests are ongoing tasks that are never going to be “finished”, as Python operates as part of an ever-evolving system of technology. An even more challenging ongoing task than these necessary maintenance activities is finding ways to make Python, in the form of the standard library and the language definition, an even better tool in a developer’s toolkit. While these kinds of change are much rarer than those described above, they do happen and that process is also described as part of this guide:
Other Interpreter Implementations#This guide is specifically for contributing to the Python reference interpreter, also known as CPython (while most of the standard library is written in Python, the interpreter core is written in C and integrates most easily with the C and C++ ecosystems). There are other Python implementations, each with a different focus. Like CPython, they always have more things they would like to do than they have developers to work on them. Some major examples that may be of interest are:
Key Resources#
Additional Resources#
Code of Conduct#Please note that all interactions on Python Software Foundation-supported infrastructure is covered by the PSF Code of Conduct, which includes all infrastructure used in the development of Python itself (e.g. mailing lists, issue trackers, GitHub, etc.). In general this means everyone is expected to be open, considerate, and respectful of others no matter what their position is within the project. Full Table of Contents#
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