All the news that fits, we print.
(Went through the logs looking for nuggets. This is what I found.)
diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index 6872b73..aca9b8b 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -8,6 +8,11 @@
constructor, with the same signature as the builtin open() function.
file() is now the preferred way to open a file.
+- In 2.2a3, __new__ would only see sequential arguments passed to the
+ type in a constructor call; __init__ would see both sequential and
+ positional arguments. This made no sense whatsoever any more, so
+ now both __new__ and __init__ see all arguments.
+
- In 2.2a3, hash() applied to an instance of a subclass of str or unicode
always returned 0. This has been repaired.
@@ -18,29 +23,78 @@
type. For example, if s was of a str sublass type, s[:] returned s
as-is. Now it returns a str with the same value as s.
+- Applications using Jim Fulton's ExtensionClass module can now safely
+ be used with Python 2.2. In particular, Zope 2.4.1 now works with
+ Python 2.2 (as well as with Python 2.1.1). The Demo/metaclass
+ examples also work again.
+
+- Thread scheduling on Solaris should be improved; it is no longer
+ necessary to insert a small sleep at the start of a thread in order
+ to let other runnable threads be scheduled.
+
Library
+- SimpleXMLRPCServer: a new module (based upon SimpleHTMLServer)
+ simplifies writing XML RPC servers.
+
+- os.path.realpath(): a new function that returns the absoute pathname
+ after interpretation of symbolic links. On non-Unix systems, this
+ is an alias for os.path.abspath().
+
- operator.indexOf() (PySequence_Index() in the C API) now works with any
iterable object.
-- The smtplib module now supports various authentication and security
- features of the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls()
- methods.
+- smtplib now supports various authentication and security features of
+ the SMTP protocol through the new login() and starttls() methods.
-- A new hmac module implementing keyed hashing for message authentication.
+- hmac: a new module implementing keyed hashing for message
+ authentication.
+
+- mimetypes now recognizes more extensions and file types. At the
+ same time, some mappings not sanctioned by IANA were removed.
Tools
+- The "compiler" package has been brought up to date to the state of
+ Python 2.2 bytecode generation.
+
Build
+- Large file support (LFS) is now automatic when the platform supports
+ it; no more manual configuration tweaks are needed. On Linux, at
+ least, it's possible to have a system whose C library supports large
+ files but whose kernel doesn't; in this case, large file support is
+ still enabled but doesn't do you any good unless you upgrade your
+ kernel or share your Python executable with another system whose
+ kernel has large file support.
+
+- The configure script now supplies plausible defaults in a
+ cross-compilation environment. This doesn't mean that the supplied
+ values are always correct, or that cross-compilation now works
+ flawlessly -- but it's a first step (and it shuts up most of
+ autoconf's warnings about AC_TRY_RUN).
+
+- The Unix build is now a bit less chatty, courtesy of the parser
+ generator. The build is completely silent (except for errors) when
+ using "make -s", thanks to a -q option to setup.py.
+
C API
+- The "structmember" API now supports some new flag bits to deny read
+ and/or write access to attributes in restricted execution mode.
+
New platforms
+- Compaq's iPAQ handheld, running the "familiar" Linux distribution
+ (http://familiar.handhelds.org).
+
Tests
Windows
+- Large file support now also works for files > 4GB, on filesystems
+ that support it (NTFS under Windows 2000).
+
What's New in Python 2.2a3?
===========================