blob: 7797ddfd32e739ec7aa146dce7424594fea7e3f6 [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
Martin v. Löwisec59d042009-01-12 07:59:10 +000015- Issue #4915: Port sysmodule to Windows CE.
16
Antoine Pitrouab868312009-01-10 15:40:25 +000017- Issue #4868: utf-8, utf-16 and latin1 decoding are now 2x to 4x faster. The
18 common cases are optimized thanks to a dedicated fast path and a moderate
19 amount of loop unrolling.
20
Antoine Pitrou14b78f52009-01-09 22:27:08 +000021- Issue #4074: Change the criteria for doing a full garbage collection (i.e.
22 collecting the oldest generation) so that allocating lots of objects without
23 destroying them does not show quadratic performance. Based on a proposal by
24 Martin von Löwis at
25 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-June/080579.html.
26
Antoine Pitrou8043cf82009-01-09 19:54:29 +000027- Issue #4604: Some objects of the I/O library could still be used after
28 having been closed (for instance, a read() call could return some
29 previously buffered data). Patch by Dmitry Vasiliev.
30
Antoine Pitrou05608432009-01-09 18:53:14 +000031- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
32 flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
33 and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
34 to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
35
Raymond Hettinger35631532009-01-09 03:58:09 +000036- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
37 instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
38 Python's overall memory).
39
Antoine Pitroud35cbf62009-01-06 19:02:24 +000040- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
41 an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
42 code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
43 file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
44 Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
45
Antoine Pitrouc3b39242009-01-03 16:59:18 +000046- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
47 one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
48 items, rather than the size in bytes.
49
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +000050- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
51
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc374e2202009-01-01 23:05:36 +000052- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
53 non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
54
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000055- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
Hirokazu Yamamoto8ed9a802009-01-01 16:09:52 +000056 file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000057
Antoine Pitrou7ddda782009-01-01 15:35:33 +000058- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
59 did not get collected.
60
Nick Coghlanf1f2f682008-12-30 07:29:12 +000061- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
62 where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
63
Georg Brandlccc47b62008-12-28 11:44:14 +000064- Issue #4759: None is now allowed as the first argument of
65 bytearray.translate(). It was always allowed for bytes.translate().
66
Skip Montanaro80072cb2008-12-23 03:51:14 +000067- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
68 fail.
69
Antoine Pitrou51f3ef92008-12-20 13:14:23 +000070- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
71
Antoine Pitrouf289ae62008-12-18 11:06:25 +000072- Issue #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
73 comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.
74
Antoine Pitrou621601a2008-12-17 23:18:19 +000075- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
76 print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
77 unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
78
Mark Dickinson54bc1ec2008-12-17 16:19:07 +000079- Issue #3439: Add a bit_length method to int.
80
Mark Dickinsonda2706b2008-12-11 18:03:03 +000081- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
82 nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
83 failures on OS X.
84
Jeffrey Yasskinb9083f32008-12-11 06:18:33 +000085- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
86 exceptions.
87
88- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc10b24e82008-12-10 23:49:33 +000089 context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
90
Mark Dickinsonfd24b322008-12-06 15:33:31 +000091- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
92 "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
93 bytes instances. On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
94 (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.
95
Christian Heimesa872de52008-12-05 08:26:55 +000096- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
97 growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
98 Python 2.x.
99
Antoine Pitrou5504e892008-12-06 21:27:53 +0000100- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
101 which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
102
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000103- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
104 method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
105 kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
106 object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.
Matthias Klose7e1b8fa2008-11-26 17:22:04 +0000107
Antoine Pitroubc420402008-12-07 20:14:49 +0000108- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
109 larger than 1.
110
Benjamin Peterson371ccfb2008-12-27 19:03:36 +0000111- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.
112
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +0000113Library
114-------
115
Gregory P. Smithde3369f2009-01-12 04:50:11 +0000116- Issue #3826 and #4791: The socket module now closes the underlying socket
117 appropriately when it is being used via socket.makefile() objects
118 rather than delaying the close by waiting for garbage collection to do it.
119
Antoine Pitrou308705e2009-01-10 16:22:51 +0000120- Issue #3860: GzipFile and BZ2File now support the context manager protocol.
121
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000122- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
123 function without defining argtypes.
124
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000125- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
126 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
127 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
128 Jacques Frechet.
129
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000130- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
131
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000132- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
133 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
134
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000135- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
136 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
137 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
138
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000139- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
140 to the decimal module.
141
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000142- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
143 cast as floats.
144
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000145- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
146 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
147
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000148- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
149 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
150
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000151- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
152 the function is not a generator.
153
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000154- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
155 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
156
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000157- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
158 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
159
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000160- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
161
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000162- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
163
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000164- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
165 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
166
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000167- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
168 works as expected in the interactive environment.
169
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000170- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
171 Gabriel Genellina.
172
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000173- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
174 boundary.
175
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000176- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
177 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
178 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
179
180- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
181 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
182 Alexander Belopolsky.
183
184- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
185 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
186 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
187 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
188 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
189 Alexander Belopolsky.
190
191- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
192 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
193 Alexander Belopolsky.
194
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000195- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
196 a non-ASCII letter.
197
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000198- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
199
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000200- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
201 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
202
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000203- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
204 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
205 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
206
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000207- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
208 libs.
209
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000210- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
211 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
212
213- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
214 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
215 Content-Disposition headers.
216
217- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
218 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
219 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
220 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
221 doesn't configure logging.
222
223- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
224 exception.
225
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000226- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
227 statements.
228
229- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
230 not a malformed option.
231
232- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
233 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
234
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000235- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
236 the corresponding tests now pass.
237
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000238- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
239 it was calling the wrong open() function.
240
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000241- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
242 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
243 Content-Disposition headers.
244
Matthias Klose2c7e3ee2009-01-10 17:08:25 +0000245- Issue #4861: ctypes.util.find_library(): Robustify. Fix library detection on
246 biarch systems. Try to rely on ldconfig only, without using objdump and gcc.
247
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000248Tools/Demos
249-----------
250
251- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
252
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000253
254Build
255-----
256
Martin v. Löwise97637d2009-01-11 09:45:11 +0000257- Issue #4895: Use _strdup on Windows CE.
258
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000259- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
260
261- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
262
263- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
264
265- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
266
267- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
268
269- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
270
271- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
272
273- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
274
275- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
276
277- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
278
279
280C-API
281-----
282
283- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
284
285- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
286 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
287
288- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
289 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
290
291
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000292Extension Modules
293-----------------
294
Martin v. Löwisa9b54c72009-01-11 09:30:50 +0000295- Issue #4279: Fix build of parsermodule under Cygwin.
296
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000297- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
298 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
299 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
300
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000301- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
302
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000303- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
304 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
305 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
306
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000307- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
308
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000309- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
310
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000311- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
312 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000313
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000314- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
315 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
316 buffer.
317
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000318
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000319Docs
320----
321
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000322
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000323**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**