blob: 5f8eda5f75f2c9398aecf3058b6e0c6683af6bc0 [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
Antoine Pitrou81fabdb2009-01-22 10:11:36 +000015- Issue #4874: Most builtin decoders now reject unicode input.
16
Mark Dickinson9ffc0202009-01-20 20:45:53 +000017- Issue #4842: Don't allow trailing 'L' when constructing an integer
18 from a string.
19
Benjamin Peterson05e782f2009-01-19 15:15:02 +000020- Issue #4991: os.fdopen now raises an OSError for invalid file descriptors.
21
Antoine Pitroue4bc7f62009-01-17 21:06:43 +000022- Issue #4838: When a module is deallocated, free the memory backing the
23 optional module state data.
24
Mark Dickinson8055afd2009-01-17 10:04:45 +000025- Issue #4910: Rename nb_long slot to nb_reserved, and change its
26 type to (void *).
27
Antoine Pitrou8d4e5052009-01-13 22:59:11 +000028- Issue #4935: The overflow checking code in the expandtabs() method common
29 to str, bytes and bytearray could be optimized away by the compiler, letting
30 the interpreter segfault instead of raising an error.
31
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcf343e012009-01-12 23:58:21 +000032- Issue #3720: Fix a crash when an iterator modifies its class and removes its
33 __next__ method.
34
Mark Dickinsone5e298f2009-01-12 20:49:19 +000035- Issue #4910: Builtin int() function and PyNumber_Long/PyNumber_Int API
36 function no longer attempt to call the __long__ slot to convert an object
37 to an integer. Only the __int__ and __trunc__ slots are examined.
38
Martin v. Löwis7c2b66c2009-01-12 08:21:03 +000039- Issue #4893: Use NT threading on CE.
40
Martin v. Löwisec59d042009-01-12 07:59:10 +000041- Issue #4915: Port sysmodule to Windows CE.
42
Antoine Pitrouab868312009-01-10 15:40:25 +000043- Issue #4868: utf-8, utf-16 and latin1 decoding are now 2x to 4x faster. The
44 common cases are optimized thanks to a dedicated fast path and a moderate
45 amount of loop unrolling.
46
Antoine Pitrou14b78f52009-01-09 22:27:08 +000047- Issue #4074: Change the criteria for doing a full garbage collection (i.e.
48 collecting the oldest generation) so that allocating lots of objects without
49 destroying them does not show quadratic performance. Based on a proposal by
50 Martin von Löwis at
51 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-June/080579.html.
52
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +000053- Issue #4604: Some objects of the I/O library could still be used after
Antoine Pitrou8043cf82009-01-09 19:54:29 +000054 having been closed (for instance, a read() call could return some
55 previously buffered data). Patch by Dmitry Vasiliev.
56
Antoine Pitrou05608432009-01-09 18:53:14 +000057- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
58 flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
59 and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
60 to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
61
Raymond Hettinger35631532009-01-09 03:58:09 +000062- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
63 instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
64 Python's overall memory).
65
Antoine Pitroud35cbf62009-01-06 19:02:24 +000066- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
67 an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
68 code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
69 file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
70 Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
71
Antoine Pitrouc3b39242009-01-03 16:59:18 +000072- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
73 one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
74 items, rather than the size in bytes.
75
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +000076- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
77
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc374e2202009-01-01 23:05:36 +000078- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
79 non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
80
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000081- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
Hirokazu Yamamoto8ed9a802009-01-01 16:09:52 +000082 file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000083
Antoine Pitrou7ddda782009-01-01 15:35:33 +000084- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
85 did not get collected.
86
Nick Coghlanf1f2f682008-12-30 07:29:12 +000087- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
88 where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
89
Georg Brandlccc47b62008-12-28 11:44:14 +000090- Issue #4759: None is now allowed as the first argument of
91 bytearray.translate(). It was always allowed for bytes.translate().
92
Skip Montanaro80072cb2008-12-23 03:51:14 +000093- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
94 fail.
95
Antoine Pitrou51f3ef92008-12-20 13:14:23 +000096- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
97
Antoine Pitrouf289ae62008-12-18 11:06:25 +000098- Issue #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
99 comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.
100
Antoine Pitrou621601a2008-12-17 23:18:19 +0000101- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
102 print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
103 unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
104
Mark Dickinson54bc1ec2008-12-17 16:19:07 +0000105- Issue #3439: Add a bit_length method to int.
106
Mark Dickinsonda2706b2008-12-11 18:03:03 +0000107- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
108 nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
109 failures on OS X.
110
Jeffrey Yasskinb9083f32008-12-11 06:18:33 +0000111- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
112 exceptions.
113
114- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc10b24e82008-12-10 23:49:33 +0000115 context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
116
Mark Dickinsonfd24b322008-12-06 15:33:31 +0000117- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
118 "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
119 bytes instances. On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
120 (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.
121
Christian Heimesa872de52008-12-05 08:26:55 +0000122- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
123 growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
124 Python 2.x.
125
Antoine Pitrou5504e892008-12-06 21:27:53 +0000126- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
127 which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
128
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000129- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
130 method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
131 kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
132 object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.
Matthias Klose7e1b8fa2008-11-26 17:22:04 +0000133
Antoine Pitroubc420402008-12-07 20:14:49 +0000134- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
135 larger than 1.
136
Benjamin Peterson371ccfb2008-12-27 19:03:36 +0000137- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.
138
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +0000139Library
140-------
141
Mark Dickinsoncddcf442009-01-24 21:46:33 +0000142- Issue #1672332: fix unpickling of subnormal floats, which was
143 producing a ValueError on some platforms.
144
Martin v. Löwisacbf4612009-01-24 16:19:45 +0000145- Issue #3881: Help Tcl to load even when started through the
146 unreadable local symlink to "Program Files" on Vista.
147
Martin v. Löwis59e47792009-01-24 14:10:07 +0000148- Issue #4710: Extract directories properly in the zipfile module;
149 allow adding directories to a zipfile.
150
Jesse Noller6fd47e22009-01-23 14:09:08 +0000151- Issue #3807: _multiprocessing build fails when configure is passed
152 --without-threads argument. When this occurs, _multiprocessing will
153 be disabled, and not compiled.
154
Antoine Pitrou08838b62009-01-21 00:55:13 +0000155- Issue #5008: When a file is opened in append mode with the new IO library,
156 do an explicit seek to the end of file (so that e.g. tell() returns the
157 file size rather than 0). This is consistent with the behaviour of the
158 traditional 2.x file object.
159
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000160- Issue #5013: Fixed a bug in FileHandler which occurred when the delay
161 parameter was set.
162
Mark Dickinson8dd05142009-01-20 20:43:58 +0000163- Issue #4842: Always append a trailing 'L' when pickling longs using
164 pickle protocol 0. When reading, the 'L' is optional.
165
Brett Cannonafccd632009-01-20 02:21:27 +0000166- Add the importlib package.
167
Jesse Noller9a0fc972009-01-18 21:12:58 +0000168- Issue #4301: Patch the logging module to add processName support, remove
169 _check_logger_class from multiprocessing.
170
Jesse Noller1cbb17a2009-01-18 19:45:18 +0000171- Issue #3325: Remove python2.x try: except: imports for old cPickle from
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000172 multiprocessing.
Jesse Nollerf70a5382009-01-18 19:44:02 +0000173
Benjamin Peterson9953a8d2009-01-17 04:15:01 +0000174- Issue #4959: inspect.formatargspec now works for keyword only arguments
175 without defaults.
176
Jesse Noller6214edd2009-01-19 16:23:53 +0000177- Issue #3321: _multiprocessing.Connection() doesn't check handle; added checks
178 for *nix machines for negative handles and large int handles. Without this check
179 it is possible to segfault the interpreter.
180
Jesse Nollerb0516a62009-01-18 03:11:38 +0000181- Issue #4449: AssertionError in mp_benchmarks.py, caused by an underlying issue
182 in sharedctypes.py.
183
184- Issue #1225107: inspect.isclass() returned True for instances with a custom
185 __getattr__.
186
Gregory P. Smithde3369f2009-01-12 04:50:11 +0000187- Issue #3826 and #4791: The socket module now closes the underlying socket
188 appropriately when it is being used via socket.makefile() objects
189 rather than delaying the close by waiting for garbage collection to do it.
190
Raymond Hettingerb8baf632009-01-14 02:20:07 +0000191- Issue #1696199: Add collections.Counter() for rapid and convenient
192 counting.
193
Antoine Pitrou308705e2009-01-10 16:22:51 +0000194- Issue #3860: GzipFile and BZ2File now support the context manager protocol.
195
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000196- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
197 function without defining argtypes.
198
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000199- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
200 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
201 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
202 Jacques Frechet.
203
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000204- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
205
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000206- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
207 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
208
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000209- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
210 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000211 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
212
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000213- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
214 to the decimal module.
215
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000216- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
217 cast as floats.
218
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000219- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
220 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
221
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000222- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
223 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
224
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000225- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
226 the function is not a generator.
227
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000228- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
229 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000230
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000231- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000232 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
233
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000234- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
235
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000236- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
237
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000238- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
239 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
240
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000241- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
242 works as expected in the interactive environment.
243
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000244- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
245 Gabriel Genellina.
246
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000247- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
248 boundary.
249
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000250- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
251 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
252 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
253
254- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
255 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
256 Alexander Belopolsky.
257
258- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
259 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
260 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
261 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
262 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
263 Alexander Belopolsky.
264
265- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
266 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
267 Alexander Belopolsky.
268
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000269- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
270 a non-ASCII letter.
271
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000272- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
273
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000274- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
275 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
276
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000277- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
278 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
279 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
280
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000281- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
282 libs.
283
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000284- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
285 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
286
287- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
288 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
289 Content-Disposition headers.
290
291- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
292 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
293 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
294 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
295 doesn't configure logging.
296
297- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
298 exception.
299
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000300- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
301 statements.
302
303- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
304 not a malformed option.
305
306- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
307 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
308
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000309- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
310 the corresponding tests now pass.
311
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000312- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
313 it was calling the wrong open() function.
314
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000315- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
316 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
317 Content-Disposition headers.
318
Matthias Klose2c7e3ee2009-01-10 17:08:25 +0000319- Issue #4861: ctypes.util.find_library(): Robustify. Fix library detection on
320 biarch systems. Try to rely on ldconfig only, without using objdump and gcc.
321
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000322Tools/Demos
323-----------
324
325- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
326
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000327
328Build
329-----
330
Martin v. Löwise97637d2009-01-11 09:45:11 +0000331- Issue #4895: Use _strdup on Windows CE.
332
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000333- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
334
335- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
336
337- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
338
339- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
340
341- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
342
343- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
344
345- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
346
347- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
348
349- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
350
351- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
352
353
354C-API
355-----
356
357- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
358
359- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
360 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
361
362- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
363 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
364
365
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000366Extension Modules
367-----------------
368
Mark Dickinson29500f62009-01-15 15:36:10 +0000369- Issue #4397: Fix occasional test_socket failure on OS X.
370
Martin v. Löwisa9b54c72009-01-11 09:30:50 +0000371- Issue #4279: Fix build of parsermodule under Cygwin.
372
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000373- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
374 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
375 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
376
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000377- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
378
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000379- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
380 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
381 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
382
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000383- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
384
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000385- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
386
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000387- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
388 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000389
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000390- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
391 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
392 buffer.
393
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000394
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000395Docs
396----
397
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000398
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000399**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**