merge from default branch accumulated changes since Nov 2023 #529

Job	Run time
CI build test (3.10, ubuntu-latest, false)	12m 3s
CI build test (3.13, ubuntu-latest, false)	13m 19s
CI build test (3.12, ubuntu-latest, false)	11m 7s
CI build test (3.13t, ubuntu-24.04, true)	17m 42s
CI build test (3.7, ubuntu-22.04)	10m 40s
CI build test (3.8, ubuntu-22.04)	11m 22s
finish	4s
	1h 16m 17s

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