In a new development, free-threaded builds will now allow users to disable the GIL by setting `PYTHON_GIL=0`. This change is being tracked to address issues related to loading incompatible extensions and potentially disabling the GIL by default. This adjustment allows for the GIL to be easily re-enabled at runtime, ensuring smooth operation of tests and basic threaded programs. However, running the full test suite may lead to crashes, particularly in `test_asyncio`. These updates have been marked for review by swtaarrs on March 7, 2024.
https://github.com/python/cpython/pull/116338