# Documentation for `gcr.io/distroless/python3`

## Image Contents

This image contains a minimal Linux, Python-based runtime.

Specifically, the image contains everything in the [base image](../base/README.md), plus:

* Python 3 and its dependencies.
    * 3.11 on debian 12
    * 3.13 on debian 13
* No shell

## ldconfig and ctypes

On debian13+ we include a pre-generated `ld.so.cache` to support user/framework calls to `ctypes.util.find_library()`. If a user modifies the image by adding a new library, it will not be found in the cache without calling ldconfig to refresh the cache.

## Usage

The entrypoint of this image is set to "python", so this image expects users to supply a path to a .py file in the CMD.

See the Python [Hello World](../examples/python3/) directory for an example.