python-discovery 1.4.0

Python interpreter discovery

python-discovery

What is python-discovery?

python-discovery is a library for discovering Python interpreters installed on your machine. You may have multiple Python versions from system packages, pyenv, mise, asdf, uv, or the Windows registry (PEP 514). This library finds the right one for you.

Give it a requirement like python3.12 or >=3.11,<3.13, and it searches all known locations, verifies each candidate, and returns detailed metadata about the match. Results are cached to disk so repeated lookups are fast.

Usage

from pathlib import Path

from python_discovery import DiskCache, get_interpreter

cache = DiskCache(root=Path("~/.cache/python-discovery").expanduser())
result = get_interpreter("python3.12", cache=cache)
if result is not None:
    print(result.executable)  # /usr/bin/python3.12
    print(result.implementation)  # CPython
    print(result.version_info[:3])  # (3, 12, 1)

The get_interpreter() function accepts various specification formats:

• Absolute path: /usr/bin/python3.12
• Version: 3.12
• Implementation prefix: cpython3.12
• Version specifier: >=3.10, >=3.11,<3.13

Documentation

Full documentation is available at python-discovery.readthedocs.io