Migrating from Cython 0.29 to 3.0

Cython 3.0 is a major revision of the compiler and the language that comes with some backwards incompatible changes. This document lists the important ones and explains how to deal with them in existing code.

Python 3 syntax/semantics

Cython 3.0 now uses Python 3 syntax and semantics by default, which previously required setting the language_level directive <compiler-directives> to either 3 or 3str. The new default setting is now language_level=3str, which means Python 3 semantics, but unprefixed strings are str objects, i.e. unicode text strings under Python 3 and byte strings under Python 2.7.

You can revert your code to the previous (Python 2.x) semantics by setting language_level=2.

Further semantic changes due to the language level include:

  • /-division uses the true (float) division operator, unless cdivision is enabled.

  • print is a function, not a statement.

  • Python classes that are defined without bases (class C: ...) are “new-style” classes also in Py2.x (if you never heard about “old-style classes”, you’re probably happy without them).

  • Annotations (type hints) are now stored as strings. (PEP 563)

  • StopIteration handling in generators has been changed according to PEP 479.

Python semantics

Some Python compatibility bugs were fixed, e.g.

Binding functions

The binding directive is now enabled by default. This makes Cython compiled Python (def) functions mostly compatible with normal (non-compiled) Python functions, regarding signature introspection, annotations, etc.

It also makes them bind as methods in Python classes on attribute assignments, thus the name. If this is not intended, i.e. if a function is really meant to be a function and never a method, you can disable the binding (and all other Python function features) by setting binding=False or selectively adding a decorator @cython.binding(False). In pure Python mode, the decorator was not available in Cython 0.29.16 yet, but compiled code does not suffer from this.

We recommend, however, to keep the new function features and instead deal with the binding issue using the standard Python staticmethod() builtin.

def func(self, b): ...

class MyClass(object):
    binding_method = func

    no_method = staticmethod(func)

Namespace packages

Cython now has support for loading pxd files also from namespace packages according to PEP-420. This might have an impact on the import path.

NumPy C-API

Cython used to generate code that depended on the deprecated pre-NumPy-1.7 C-API. This is no longer the case with Cython 3.0.

You can now define the macro NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API=NPY_1_7_API_VERSION to get rid of the long-standing build warnings that the compiled C module uses a deprecated API. Either per file:

# distutils: define_macros=NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API=NPY_1_7_API_VERSION

or by setting it in your Extensions in setup.py:

Extension(...
    define_macros=[("NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API", "NPY_1_7_API_VERSION")]
)

One side-effect of the different C-API usage is that your code may now require a call to the NumPy C-API initialisation function where it previously got away without doing so.

In order to reduce the user impact here, Cython 3.0 will now call it automatically when it sees numpy being cimported, but the function not being used. In the (hopefully rare) cases where this gets in the way, the internal C-API initialisation can be disabled by faking the use of the function without actually calling it, e.g.

# Explicitly disable the automatic initialisation of NumPy's C-API.
<void>import_array

Class-private name mangling

Cython has been updated to follow the Python rules for class-private names more closely. Essentially any name that starts with and doesn’t end with __ within a class is mangled with the class name. Most user code should be unaffected – unlike in Python unmangled global names will still be matched to ensure it is possible to access C names beginning with __:

cdef extern void __foo()

class C: # or "cdef class"
   def call_foo(self):
       return __foo() # still calls the global name

What will no-longer work is overriding methods starting with __ in a cdef class:

cdef class Base:
    cdef __bar(self):
        return 1

    def call_bar(self):
        return self.__bar()

cdef class Derived(Base):
    cdef __bar(self):
        return 2

Here Base.__bar is mangled to _Base__bar and Derived.__bar to _Derived__bar. Therefore call_bar will always call _Base__bar. This matches established Python behaviour and applies for def, cdef and cpdef methods and attributes.

Arithmetic special methods

The behaviour of arithmetic special methods (for example __add__ and __pow__) of cdef classes has changed in Cython 3.0. They now support separate “reversed” versions of these methods (e.g. __radd__, __rpow__) that behave like in pure Python. The main incompatible change is that the type of the first operand (usually __self__) is now assumed to be that of the defining class, rather than relying on the user to test and cast the type of each operand.

The old behaviour can be restored with the directive c_api_binop_methods=True. More details are given in Arithmetic methods.