home = string  :  path to Python home

The home option should be a string indicating the path to the directory where Python is installed.

path=string  :  paths to Python libraries

The path option should be a string indicating the path to the directories where Python libraries are installed.  The directories must be separated by the standard system path separator, ";" on Windows, and ":" on macOS and Linux.

port=integer  :  communication port

The port option is an advanced option used by developers to start "mpython -noclient" in a separate shell Window and direct communication to the already running process.  This may be useful for debugging initialization problems.

The Start command initializes the environment and starts a "mpython" interface process.  Normally this command does not need to be explicitly called as initialization will be handled automatically when calling commands in the Python package.

By default the Python install in $MAPLE/Python.$SYS is used.  You can direct Maple to use a different installed version of Python by providing home and path options to this command.  For this override to work the Start command with appropriate options must be executed before evaluating any other command in the Python package.

An alternate override is to set the system environment variables PYTHONHOME and PYTHONPATH.

When overriding the default Python you must point to an ABI compatible version of Python.  Maple currently only supports Python version 3.11.6.

This function is part of the Python package, so it can be used in the short form Start(..) only after executing the command with(Python). However, it can always be accessed through the long form of the command by using Python[Start](..).

$\mathrm{with}\left(\mathrm{Python}\right)\:$

$\mathrm{Start}\left('\mathrm{home}'=''/usr/local/python''\right)$

The Python[Start] command was introduced in Maple 2018.

For more information on Maple 2018 changes, see Updates in Maple 2018.