blob: 69c42d27b3f85aadb2e7177dab571886af431020 [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 Dickinson8055afd2009-01-17 10:04:45 +000015- Issue #4910: Rename nb_long slot to nb_reserved, and change its
16 type to (void *).
17
Antoine Pitrou8d4e5052009-01-13 22:59:11 +000018- Issue #4935: The overflow checking code in the expandtabs() method common
19 to str, bytes and bytearray could be optimized away by the compiler, letting
20 the interpreter segfault instead of raising an error.
21
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcf343e012009-01-12 23:58:21 +000022- Issue #3720: Fix a crash when an iterator modifies its class and removes its
23 __next__ method.
24
Mark Dickinsone5e298f2009-01-12 20:49:19 +000025- Issue #4910: Builtin int() function and PyNumber_Long/PyNumber_Int API
26 function no longer attempt to call the __long__ slot to convert an object
27 to an integer. Only the __int__ and __trunc__ slots are examined.
28
Martin v. Löwis7c2b66c2009-01-12 08:21:03 +000029- Issue #4893: Use NT threading on CE.
30
Martin v. Löwisec59d042009-01-12 07:59:10 +000031- Issue #4915: Port sysmodule to Windows CE.
32
Antoine Pitrouab868312009-01-10 15:40:25 +000033- Issue #4868: utf-8, utf-16 and latin1 decoding are now 2x to 4x faster. The
34 common cases are optimized thanks to a dedicated fast path and a moderate
35 amount of loop unrolling.
36
Antoine Pitrou14b78f52009-01-09 22:27:08 +000037- Issue #4074: Change the criteria for doing a full garbage collection (i.e.
38 collecting the oldest generation) so that allocating lots of objects without
39 destroying them does not show quadratic performance. Based on a proposal by
40 Martin von Löwis at
41 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-June/080579.html.
42
Antoine Pitrou8043cf82009-01-09 19:54:29 +000043- Issue #4604: Some objects of the I/O library could still be used after
44 having been closed (for instance, a read() call could return some
45 previously buffered data). Patch by Dmitry Vasiliev.
46
Antoine Pitrou05608432009-01-09 18:53:14 +000047- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
48 flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
49 and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
50 to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
51
Raymond Hettinger35631532009-01-09 03:58:09 +000052- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
53 instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
54 Python's overall memory).
55
Antoine Pitroud35cbf62009-01-06 19:02:24 +000056- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
57 an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
58 code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
59 file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
60 Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
61
Antoine Pitrouc3b39242009-01-03 16:59:18 +000062- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
63 one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
64 items, rather than the size in bytes.
65
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +000066- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
67
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc374e2202009-01-01 23:05:36 +000068- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
69 non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
70
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000071- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
Hirokazu Yamamoto8ed9a802009-01-01 16:09:52 +000072 file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000073
Antoine Pitrou7ddda782009-01-01 15:35:33 +000074- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
75 did not get collected.
76
Nick Coghlanf1f2f682008-12-30 07:29:12 +000077- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
78 where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
79
Georg Brandlccc47b62008-12-28 11:44:14 +000080- Issue #4759: None is now allowed as the first argument of
81 bytearray.translate(). It was always allowed for bytes.translate().
82
Skip Montanaro80072cb2008-12-23 03:51:14 +000083- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
84 fail.
85
Antoine Pitrou51f3ef92008-12-20 13:14:23 +000086- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
87
Antoine Pitrouf289ae62008-12-18 11:06:25 +000088- Issue #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
89 comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.
90
Antoine Pitrou621601a2008-12-17 23:18:19 +000091- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
92 print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
93 unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
94
Mark Dickinson54bc1ec2008-12-17 16:19:07 +000095- Issue #3439: Add a bit_length method to int.
96
Mark Dickinsonda2706b2008-12-11 18:03:03 +000097- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
98 nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
99 failures on OS X.
100
Jeffrey Yasskinb9083f32008-12-11 06:18:33 +0000101- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
102 exceptions.
103
104- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc10b24e82008-12-10 23:49:33 +0000105 context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
106
Mark Dickinsonfd24b322008-12-06 15:33:31 +0000107- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
108 "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
109 bytes instances. On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
110 (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.
111
Christian Heimesa872de52008-12-05 08:26:55 +0000112- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
113 growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
114 Python 2.x.
115
Antoine Pitrou5504e892008-12-06 21:27:53 +0000116- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
117 which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
118
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000119- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
120 method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
121 kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
122 object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.
Matthias Klose7e1b8fa2008-11-26 17:22:04 +0000123
Antoine Pitroubc420402008-12-07 20:14:49 +0000124- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
125 larger than 1.
126
Benjamin Peterson371ccfb2008-12-27 19:03:36 +0000127- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.
128
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +0000129Library
130-------
131
Benjamin Peterson9953a8d2009-01-17 04:15:01 +0000132- Issue #4959: inspect.formatargspec now works for keyword only arguments
133 without defaults.
134
Gregory P. Smithde3369f2009-01-12 04:50:11 +0000135- Issue #3826 and #4791: The socket module now closes the underlying socket
136 appropriately when it is being used via socket.makefile() objects
137 rather than delaying the close by waiting for garbage collection to do it.
138
Raymond Hettingerb8baf632009-01-14 02:20:07 +0000139- Issue #1696199: Add collections.Counter() for rapid and convenient
140 counting.
141
Antoine Pitrou308705e2009-01-10 16:22:51 +0000142- Issue #3860: GzipFile and BZ2File now support the context manager protocol.
143
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000144- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
145 function without defining argtypes.
146
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000147- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
148 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
149 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
150 Jacques Frechet.
151
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000152- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
153
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000154- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
155 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
156
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000157- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
158 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
159 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
160
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000161- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
162 to the decimal module.
163
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000164- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
165 cast as floats.
166
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000167- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
168 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
169
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000170- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
171 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
172
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000173- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
174 the function is not a generator.
175
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000176- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
177 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
178
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000179- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
180 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
181
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000182- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
183
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000184- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
185
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000186- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
187 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
188
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000189- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
190 works as expected in the interactive environment.
191
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000192- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
193 Gabriel Genellina.
194
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000195- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
196 boundary.
197
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000198- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
199 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
200 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
201
202- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
203 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
204 Alexander Belopolsky.
205
206- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
207 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
208 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
209 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
210 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
211 Alexander Belopolsky.
212
213- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
214 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
215 Alexander Belopolsky.
216
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000217- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
218 a non-ASCII letter.
219
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000220- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
221
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000222- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
223 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
224
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000225- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
226 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
227 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
228
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000229- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
230 libs.
231
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000232- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
233 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
234
235- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
236 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
237 Content-Disposition headers.
238
239- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
240 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
241 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
242 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
243 doesn't configure logging.
244
245- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
246 exception.
247
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000248- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
249 statements.
250
251- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
252 not a malformed option.
253
254- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
255 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
256
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000257- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
258 the corresponding tests now pass.
259
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000260- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
261 it was calling the wrong open() function.
262
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000263- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
264 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
265 Content-Disposition headers.
266
Matthias Klose2c7e3ee2009-01-10 17:08:25 +0000267- Issue #4861: ctypes.util.find_library(): Robustify. Fix library detection on
268 biarch systems. Try to rely on ldconfig only, without using objdump and gcc.
269
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000270Tools/Demos
271-----------
272
273- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
274
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000275
276Build
277-----
278
Martin v. Löwise97637d2009-01-11 09:45:11 +0000279- Issue #4895: Use _strdup on Windows CE.
280
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000281- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
282
283- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
284
285- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
286
287- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
288
289- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
290
291- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
292
293- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
294
295- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
296
297- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
298
299- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
300
301
302C-API
303-----
304
305- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
306
307- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
308 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
309
310- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
311 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
312
313
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000314Extension Modules
315-----------------
316
Mark Dickinson29500f62009-01-15 15:36:10 +0000317- Issue #4397: Fix occasional test_socket failure on OS X.
318
Martin v. Löwisa9b54c72009-01-11 09:30:50 +0000319- Issue #4279: Fix build of parsermodule under Cygwin.
320
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000321- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
322 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
323 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
324
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000325- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
326
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000327- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
328 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
329 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
330
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000331- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
332
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000333- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
334
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000335- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
336 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000337
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000338- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
339 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
340 buffer.
341
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000342
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000343Docs
344----
345
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000346
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000347**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**