Profiles and toolchains#

Profiles are named build defaults; capabilities describe what the current runtime can actually support. Keep those concepts separate.

Useful inspection functions include:

• platform_capabilities;

• runtime_capabilities;

• resolved_toolchain;

• compiler_capabilities;

• list_compilers; and

• api_stability / list_api.

An advertised profile does not guarantee that a compiler, Python headers, Cython, NumPy headers, pybind11, or other optional prerequisites are installed. Capability checks should drive error messages and CI skips; they should not silently downgrade a requested native feature.