Add non-Windows 3.16-rc variants

[jnoordsij]

Modeled after #1091

See also https://blog.python.org/2026/10/python-3160-alpha-1-is-now-available/, https://github.com/python/cpython/releases/tag/v3.16.0a1 and https://docs.python.org/3.16/whatsnew/3.16.html

Pending Windows executables to be published at https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.16.0/

[tianon]

Looks like this might be ready for a Windows update? 👀 ❤️

[jnoordsij]

https://www.python.org/ftp/python/3.16.0/python-3.16.0a1-amd64.exe is still 404 for me 😞

(update.sh is also removing it by force on my end)

[jnoordsij]

I'm gonna leave it at this for today; feel free to push it forward if the Windows build appears sometime.

FWIW I've also created jnoordsij@198d714, which I noticed as probably relevant now that 3.15 has declared UTF-8 as the default everywhere. To be conservative and prevent dramas like #570, I've made it to target just the 3.16 rc, which should be a very safe option to test the waters I'd say.

[tianon]

Hmm, python-3.16.0a1-win32.zip does exist, so I wonder if the .exe is deprecated and we missed a notice somewhere 🤔

[yosifkit]

The Python install manager for Windows is our tool for installing and managing runtimes. The traditional executable installer will stop being released with Python 3.16

-https://www.python.org/downloads/release/pymanager-261/

(see also https://peps.python.org/pep-0773/)

[jnoordsij]

Ah yeah, that will make for a long wait 😓

I'll make this a non-Windows effort then, as I don't see an obvious first candidate in how to approach the Windows installation. The ZIP file is the embeddable package, which is not really meant to be leveraged as full distribution and lacks e.g. pip; the proposed alternative of the Python install manager is a whole new level of overhead which probably should not be persisted into the image.

[tianon]

❤️