Question: I need to use sqlite version 3.8 or higher with python in Amazon Linux. 

I updated my sqlite installation to the latest version:

```
$ sqlite3 -version
3.22.0 2018-01-22 18:45:57 0c55d179733b46d8d0ba4d88e01a25e10677046ee3da1d5b1581e86726f2171d

```

I also updated my pysqlite version

```
pip install --upgrade pysqlite

```

However, my pysqlite still only seems to support sqlite version 3.7:

```
$ python
>>> import sqlite3
>>> sqlite3.version
'2.6.0'
>>> sqlite3.sqlite_version
'3.7.17'
>>>
>>> from pysqlite2 import dbapi2 as sqlite
>>> sqlite.version
'2.8.3'
>>> sqlite.sqlite_version
'3.7.17'

```

How can I update the sqlite python API to support a newer version of sqlite?

Answer: 
Two ideas...

1. Use [pyenv](https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv) to install a separate interpreter, and provide the path to the newer sqlite when creating it. eg:

```
PYTHON_CONFIGURE_OPTS="LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/local/opt/sqlite/lib LDFLAGS=-L/usr/local/opt/sqlite/lib CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include" pyenv install 3.4.3

```

[This pyenv issue](https://github.com/pyenv/pyenv/issues/333) provides some more details/ideas.
2. [APSW](https://github.com/rogerbinns/apsw) provides an up to date implementation of SQLite, but has different goals from the pysqlite library. 

> 
> APSW provides an SQLite 3 wrapper that provides the thinnest layer over the SQLite database library possible. Everything you can do from the SQLite C API, you can do from Python. Although APSW looks vaguely similar to the PEP 249 (DBAPI), it is not compliant with that API because instead it works the way SQLite 3 does. (pysqlite is DBAPI compliant - see the differences between apsw and pysqlite 2).
> 
> 
> 

APSW embeds the SQLite "amalgamation" distribution statically, so you can safely use it in an environment (eg. Python) which might also have another SQLite loaded.
There's unofficial Python wheel distribution of [APSW](https://github.com/rogerbinns/apsw) which itself [doesn't release on PyPI](https://rogerbinns.github.io/apsw/download.html#easy-install-pip-pypi):

> 
> APSW is not available at the Python Package Index (pypi) and hence cannot be installed from it. (A random person has put an outdated poor quality upload under the APSW name. It has nothing useful to do with this project.) The reason for this is [...]
> 
> 
> 

And I assume the reason predates Python wheels.

The wheel distribution package is called [apsw-wheels](https://pypi.org/project/apsw-wheels/) (and [GitHub repo](https://github.com/calebj/apsw-wheels)). It worked just fine for me except for PyPy wheels.