blob: b92048c2c6d59d97082adec36734e8263cf52c46 [file] [log] [blame]
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +00001+++++++++++
2Python News
3+++++++++++
4
Anthony Baxterb0c66302004-11-04 05:23:17 +00005(editors: check NEWS.help for information about editing NEWS using ReST.)
6
Barry Warsaw97f005d2008-12-03 16:46:14 +00007What's New in Python 3.1 alpha 0
8================================
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +00009
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +000010*Release date: XX-XXX-200X*
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +000011
12Core and Builtins
13-----------------
14
Mark Dickinson9ffc0202009-01-20 20:45:53 +000015- Issue #4842: Don't allow trailing 'L' when constructing an integer
16 from a string.
17
Benjamin Peterson05e782f2009-01-19 15:15:02 +000018- Issue #4991: os.fdopen now raises an OSError for invalid file descriptors.
19
Antoine Pitroue4bc7f62009-01-17 21:06:43 +000020- Issue #4838: When a module is deallocated, free the memory backing the
21 optional module state data.
22
Mark Dickinson8055afd2009-01-17 10:04:45 +000023- Issue #4910: Rename nb_long slot to nb_reserved, and change its
24 type to (void *).
25
Antoine Pitrou8d4e5052009-01-13 22:59:11 +000026- Issue #4935: The overflow checking code in the expandtabs() method common
27 to str, bytes and bytearray could be optimized away by the compiler, letting
28 the interpreter segfault instead of raising an error.
29
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcf343e012009-01-12 23:58:21 +000030- Issue #3720: Fix a crash when an iterator modifies its class and removes its
31 __next__ method.
32
Mark Dickinsone5e298f2009-01-12 20:49:19 +000033- Issue #4910: Builtin int() function and PyNumber_Long/PyNumber_Int API
34 function no longer attempt to call the __long__ slot to convert an object
35 to an integer. Only the __int__ and __trunc__ slots are examined.
36
Martin v. Löwis7c2b66c2009-01-12 08:21:03 +000037- Issue #4893: Use NT threading on CE.
38
Martin v. Löwisec59d042009-01-12 07:59:10 +000039- Issue #4915: Port sysmodule to Windows CE.
40
Antoine Pitrouab868312009-01-10 15:40:25 +000041- Issue #4868: utf-8, utf-16 and latin1 decoding are now 2x to 4x faster. The
42 common cases are optimized thanks to a dedicated fast path and a moderate
43 amount of loop unrolling.
44
Antoine Pitrou14b78f52009-01-09 22:27:08 +000045- Issue #4074: Change the criteria for doing a full garbage collection (i.e.
46 collecting the oldest generation) so that allocating lots of objects without
47 destroying them does not show quadratic performance. Based on a proposal by
48 Martin von Löwis at
49 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-June/080579.html.
50
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +000051- Issue #4604: Some objects of the I/O library could still be used after
Antoine Pitrou8043cf82009-01-09 19:54:29 +000052 having been closed (for instance, a read() call could return some
53 previously buffered data). Patch by Dmitry Vasiliev.
54
Antoine Pitrou05608432009-01-09 18:53:14 +000055- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
56 flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
57 and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
58 to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
59
Raymond Hettinger35631532009-01-09 03:58:09 +000060- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
61 instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
62 Python's overall memory).
63
Antoine Pitroud35cbf62009-01-06 19:02:24 +000064- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
65 an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
66 code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
67 file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
68 Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
69
Antoine Pitrouc3b39242009-01-03 16:59:18 +000070- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
71 one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
72 items, rather than the size in bytes.
73
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +000074- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
75
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc374e2202009-01-01 23:05:36 +000076- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
77 non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
78
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000079- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
Hirokazu Yamamoto8ed9a802009-01-01 16:09:52 +000080 file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000081
Antoine Pitrou7ddda782009-01-01 15:35:33 +000082- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
83 did not get collected.
84
Nick Coghlanf1f2f682008-12-30 07:29:12 +000085- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
86 where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
87
Georg Brandlccc47b62008-12-28 11:44:14 +000088- Issue #4759: None is now allowed as the first argument of
89 bytearray.translate(). It was always allowed for bytes.translate().
90
Skip Montanaro80072cb2008-12-23 03:51:14 +000091- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
92 fail.
93
Antoine Pitrou51f3ef92008-12-20 13:14:23 +000094- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
95
Antoine Pitrouf289ae62008-12-18 11:06:25 +000096- Issue #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
97 comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.
98
Antoine Pitrou621601a2008-12-17 23:18:19 +000099- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
100 print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
101 unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
102
Mark Dickinson54bc1ec2008-12-17 16:19:07 +0000103- Issue #3439: Add a bit_length method to int.
104
Mark Dickinsonda2706b2008-12-11 18:03:03 +0000105- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
106 nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
107 failures on OS X.
108
Jeffrey Yasskinb9083f32008-12-11 06:18:33 +0000109- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
110 exceptions.
111
112- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc10b24e82008-12-10 23:49:33 +0000113 context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
114
Mark Dickinsonfd24b322008-12-06 15:33:31 +0000115- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
116 "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
117 bytes instances. On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
118 (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.
119
Christian Heimesa872de52008-12-05 08:26:55 +0000120- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
121 growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
122 Python 2.x.
123
Antoine Pitrou5504e892008-12-06 21:27:53 +0000124- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
125 which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
126
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000127- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
128 method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
129 kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
130 object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.
Matthias Klose7e1b8fa2008-11-26 17:22:04 +0000131
Antoine Pitroubc420402008-12-07 20:14:49 +0000132- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
133 larger than 1.
134
Benjamin Peterson371ccfb2008-12-27 19:03:36 +0000135- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.
136
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +0000137Library
138-------
139
Antoine Pitrou08838b62009-01-21 00:55:13 +0000140- Issue #5008: When a file is opened in append mode with the new IO library,
141 do an explicit seek to the end of file (so that e.g. tell() returns the
142 file size rather than 0). This is consistent with the behaviour of the
143 traditional 2.x file object.
144
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000145- Issue #5013: Fixed a bug in FileHandler which occurred when the delay
146 parameter was set.
147
Mark Dickinson8dd05142009-01-20 20:43:58 +0000148- Issue #4842: Always append a trailing 'L' when pickling longs using
149 pickle protocol 0. When reading, the 'L' is optional.
150
Brett Cannonafccd632009-01-20 02:21:27 +0000151- Add the importlib package.
152
Jesse Noller9a0fc972009-01-18 21:12:58 +0000153- Issue #4301: Patch the logging module to add processName support, remove
154 _check_logger_class from multiprocessing.
155
Jesse Noller1cbb17a2009-01-18 19:45:18 +0000156- Issue #3325: Remove python2.x try: except: imports for old cPickle from
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000157 multiprocessing.
Jesse Nollerf70a5382009-01-18 19:44:02 +0000158
Benjamin Peterson9953a8d2009-01-17 04:15:01 +0000159- Issue #4959: inspect.formatargspec now works for keyword only arguments
160 without defaults.
161
Jesse Noller6214edd2009-01-19 16:23:53 +0000162- Issue #3321: _multiprocessing.Connection() doesn't check handle; added checks
163 for *nix machines for negative handles and large int handles. Without this check
164 it is possible to segfault the interpreter.
165
Jesse Nollerb0516a62009-01-18 03:11:38 +0000166- Issue #4449: AssertionError in mp_benchmarks.py, caused by an underlying issue
167 in sharedctypes.py.
168
169- Issue #1225107: inspect.isclass() returned True for instances with a custom
170 __getattr__.
171
Gregory P. Smithde3369f2009-01-12 04:50:11 +0000172- Issue #3826 and #4791: The socket module now closes the underlying socket
173 appropriately when it is being used via socket.makefile() objects
174 rather than delaying the close by waiting for garbage collection to do it.
175
Raymond Hettingerb8baf632009-01-14 02:20:07 +0000176- Issue #1696199: Add collections.Counter() for rapid and convenient
177 counting.
178
Antoine Pitrou308705e2009-01-10 16:22:51 +0000179- Issue #3860: GzipFile and BZ2File now support the context manager protocol.
180
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000181- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
182 function without defining argtypes.
183
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000184- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
185 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
186 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
187 Jacques Frechet.
188
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000189- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
190
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000191- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
192 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
193
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000194- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
195 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000196 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
197
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000198- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
199 to the decimal module.
200
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000201- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
202 cast as floats.
203
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000204- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
205 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
206
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000207- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
208 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
209
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000210- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
211 the function is not a generator.
212
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000213- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
214 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000215
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000216- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000217 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
218
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000219- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
220
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000221- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
222
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000223- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
224 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
225
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000226- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
227 works as expected in the interactive environment.
228
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000229- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
230 Gabriel Genellina.
231
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000232- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
233 boundary.
234
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000235- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
236 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
237 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
238
239- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
240 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
241 Alexander Belopolsky.
242
243- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
244 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
245 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
246 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
247 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
248 Alexander Belopolsky.
249
250- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
251 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
252 Alexander Belopolsky.
253
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000254- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
255 a non-ASCII letter.
256
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000257- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
258
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000259- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
260 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
261
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000262- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
263 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
264 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
265
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000266- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
267 libs.
268
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000269- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
270 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
271
272- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
273 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
274 Content-Disposition headers.
275
276- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
277 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
278 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
279 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
280 doesn't configure logging.
281
282- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
283 exception.
284
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000285- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
286 statements.
287
288- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
289 not a malformed option.
290
291- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
292 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
293
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000294- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
295 the corresponding tests now pass.
296
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000297- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
298 it was calling the wrong open() function.
299
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000300- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
301 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
302 Content-Disposition headers.
303
Matthias Klose2c7e3ee2009-01-10 17:08:25 +0000304- Issue #4861: ctypes.util.find_library(): Robustify. Fix library detection on
305 biarch systems. Try to rely on ldconfig only, without using objdump and gcc.
306
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000307Tools/Demos
308-----------
309
310- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
311
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000312
313Build
314-----
315
Martin v. Löwise97637d2009-01-11 09:45:11 +0000316- Issue #4895: Use _strdup on Windows CE.
317
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000318- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
319
320- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
321
322- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
323
324- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
325
326- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
327
328- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
329
330- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
331
332- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
333
334- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
335
336- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
337
338
339C-API
340-----
341
342- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
343
344- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
345 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
346
347- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
348 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
349
350
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000351Extension Modules
352-----------------
353
Mark Dickinson29500f62009-01-15 15:36:10 +0000354- Issue #4397: Fix occasional test_socket failure on OS X.
355
Martin v. Löwisa9b54c72009-01-11 09:30:50 +0000356- Issue #4279: Fix build of parsermodule under Cygwin.
357
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000358- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
359 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
360 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
361
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000362- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
363
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000364- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
365 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
366 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
367
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000368- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
369
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000370- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
371
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000372- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
373 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000374
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000375- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
376 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
377 buffer.
378
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000379
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000380Docs
381----
382
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000383
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000384**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**