(Also posted on Discord.)

In January 2021 (mid 3.10 development), Sergey Fodoseev and I raised the compile time (and runtime) SQLite version requirements for the sqlite3 standard library extension module to SQLite 3.7.15 (2012-12-12) or newer (commit cf0b239). That enabled us to clean up the code by getting rid of a lot of preprocessor conditionals and other version specific workarounds.

For Python 3.13 (to be released October 2024), I'll raise the version requirements to either SQLite 3.8.11.1 (2015-07-29), 3.14.2 (2016-09-12), or 3.15.2 (2016-11-28). Preferably the latter.

AFAICS on DistroWatch, we should be fine with any of those SQLite versions, for all major distros¹.

Major clean-ups:

• For SQlite 3.8.11.1, I can remove a lot of conditional code related to CTEs and deterministic functions.
• For SQLite 3.14.2 I no longer need to implement two different variants of the trace callback.
• For SQLite 3.15.2, I can remove special handling for legacy deterministic user function behaviour.

Linked PRs

• gh-105875: Require SQLite 3.15.2 or newer #105876
• gh-105875: amend sqlite3 docstring wrt. SQLite requirement #129599
• [3.13] gh-105875: amend sqlite3 docstring wrt. SQLite requirement (GH-129599) #129602