blob: 35506cb6f3337016beb7eeb2639a2469ea41cac5 [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
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000140- Issue #5013: Fixed a bug in FileHandler which occurred when the delay
141 parameter was set.
142
Mark Dickinson8dd05142009-01-20 20:43:58 +0000143- Issue #4842: Always append a trailing 'L' when pickling longs using
144 pickle protocol 0. When reading, the 'L' is optional.
145
Brett Cannonafccd632009-01-20 02:21:27 +0000146- Add the importlib package.
147
Jesse Noller9a0fc972009-01-18 21:12:58 +0000148- Issue #4301: Patch the logging module to add processName support, remove
149 _check_logger_class from multiprocessing.
150
Jesse Noller1cbb17a2009-01-18 19:45:18 +0000151- Issue #3325: Remove python2.x try: except: imports for old cPickle from
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000152 multiprocessing.
Jesse Nollerf70a5382009-01-18 19:44:02 +0000153
Benjamin Peterson9953a8d2009-01-17 04:15:01 +0000154- Issue #4959: inspect.formatargspec now works for keyword only arguments
155 without defaults.
156
Jesse Noller6214edd2009-01-19 16:23:53 +0000157- Issue #3321: _multiprocessing.Connection() doesn't check handle; added checks
158 for *nix machines for negative handles and large int handles. Without this check
159 it is possible to segfault the interpreter.
160
Jesse Nollerb0516a62009-01-18 03:11:38 +0000161- Issue #4449: AssertionError in mp_benchmarks.py, caused by an underlying issue
162 in sharedctypes.py.
163
164- Issue #1225107: inspect.isclass() returned True for instances with a custom
165 __getattr__.
166
Gregory P. Smithde3369f2009-01-12 04:50:11 +0000167- Issue #3826 and #4791: The socket module now closes the underlying socket
168 appropriately when it is being used via socket.makefile() objects
169 rather than delaying the close by waiting for garbage collection to do it.
170
Raymond Hettingerb8baf632009-01-14 02:20:07 +0000171- Issue #1696199: Add collections.Counter() for rapid and convenient
172 counting.
173
Antoine Pitrou308705e2009-01-10 16:22:51 +0000174- Issue #3860: GzipFile and BZ2File now support the context manager protocol.
175
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000176- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
177 function without defining argtypes.
178
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000179- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
180 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
181 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
182 Jacques Frechet.
183
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000184- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
185
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000186- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
187 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
188
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000189- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
190 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000191 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
192
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000193- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
194 to the decimal module.
195
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000196- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
197 cast as floats.
198
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000199- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
200 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
201
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000202- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
203 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
204
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000205- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
206 the function is not a generator.
207
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000208- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
209 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000210
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000211- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000212 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
213
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000214- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
215
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000216- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
217
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000218- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
219 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
220
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000221- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
222 works as expected in the interactive environment.
223
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000224- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
225 Gabriel Genellina.
226
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000227- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
228 boundary.
229
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000230- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
231 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
232 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
233
234- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
235 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
236 Alexander Belopolsky.
237
238- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
239 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
240 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
241 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
242 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
243 Alexander Belopolsky.
244
245- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
246 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
247 Alexander Belopolsky.
248
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000249- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
250 a non-ASCII letter.
251
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000252- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
253
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000254- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
255 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
256
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000257- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
258 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
259 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
260
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000261- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
262 libs.
263
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000264- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
265 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
266
267- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
268 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
269 Content-Disposition headers.
270
271- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
272 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
273 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
274 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
275 doesn't configure logging.
276
277- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
278 exception.
279
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000280- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
281 statements.
282
283- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
284 not a malformed option.
285
286- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
287 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
288
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000289- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
290 the corresponding tests now pass.
291
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000292- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
293 it was calling the wrong open() function.
294
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000295- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
296 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
297 Content-Disposition headers.
298
Matthias Klose2c7e3ee2009-01-10 17:08:25 +0000299- Issue #4861: ctypes.util.find_library(): Robustify. Fix library detection on
300 biarch systems. Try to rely on ldconfig only, without using objdump and gcc.
301
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000302Tools/Demos
303-----------
304
305- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
306
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000307
308Build
309-----
310
Martin v. Löwise97637d2009-01-11 09:45:11 +0000311- Issue #4895: Use _strdup on Windows CE.
312
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000313- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
314
315- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
316
317- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
318
319- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
320
321- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
322
323- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
324
325- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
326
327- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
328
329- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
330
331- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
332
333
334C-API
335-----
336
337- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
338
339- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
340 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
341
342- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
343 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
344
345
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000346Extension Modules
347-----------------
348
Mark Dickinson29500f62009-01-15 15:36:10 +0000349- Issue #4397: Fix occasional test_socket failure on OS X.
350
Martin v. Löwisa9b54c72009-01-11 09:30:50 +0000351- Issue #4279: Fix build of parsermodule under Cygwin.
352
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000353- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
354 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
355 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
356
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000357- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
358
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000359- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
360 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
361 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
362
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000363- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
364
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000365- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
366
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000367- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
368 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000369
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000370- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
371 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
372 buffer.
373
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000374
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000375Docs
376----
377
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000378
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000379**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**