blob: 7832505816e433baa88e40129e533be889b89674 [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 Pitrou14b78f52009-01-09 22:27:08 +000015- Issue #4074: Change the criteria for doing a full garbage collection (i.e.
16 collecting the oldest generation) so that allocating lots of objects without
17 destroying them does not show quadratic performance. Based on a proposal by
18 Martin von Löwis at
19 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-June/080579.html.
20
Antoine Pitrou8043cf82009-01-09 19:54:29 +000021- Issue #4604: Some objects of the I/O library could still be used after
22 having been closed (for instance, a read() call could return some
23 previously buffered data). Patch by Dmitry Vasiliev.
24
Antoine Pitrou05608432009-01-09 18:53:14 +000025- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
26 flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
27 and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
28 to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
29
Raymond Hettinger35631532009-01-09 03:58:09 +000030- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
31 instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
32 Python's overall memory).
33
Antoine Pitroud35cbf62009-01-06 19:02:24 +000034- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
35 an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
36 code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
37 file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
38 Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
39
Antoine Pitrouc3b39242009-01-03 16:59:18 +000040- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
41 one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
42 items, rather than the size in bytes.
43
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +000044- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
45
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc374e2202009-01-01 23:05:36 +000046- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
47 non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
48
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000049- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
Hirokazu Yamamoto8ed9a802009-01-01 16:09:52 +000050 file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000051
Antoine Pitrou7ddda782009-01-01 15:35:33 +000052- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
53 did not get collected.
54
Nick Coghlanf1f2f682008-12-30 07:29:12 +000055- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
56 where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
57
Georg Brandlccc47b62008-12-28 11:44:14 +000058- Issue #4759: None is now allowed as the first argument of
59 bytearray.translate(). It was always allowed for bytes.translate().
60
Skip Montanaro80072cb2008-12-23 03:51:14 +000061- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
62 fail.
63
Antoine Pitrou51f3ef92008-12-20 13:14:23 +000064- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
65
Antoine Pitrouf289ae62008-12-18 11:06:25 +000066- Issue #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
67 comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.
68
Antoine Pitrou621601a2008-12-17 23:18:19 +000069- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
70 print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
71 unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
72
Mark Dickinson54bc1ec2008-12-17 16:19:07 +000073- Issue #3439: Add a bit_length method to int.
74
Mark Dickinsonda2706b2008-12-11 18:03:03 +000075- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
76 nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
77 failures on OS X.
78
Jeffrey Yasskinb9083f32008-12-11 06:18:33 +000079- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
80 exceptions.
81
82- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc10b24e82008-12-10 23:49:33 +000083 context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
84
Mark Dickinsonfd24b322008-12-06 15:33:31 +000085- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
86 "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
87 bytes instances. On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
88 (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.
89
Christian Heimesa872de52008-12-05 08:26:55 +000090- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
91 growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
92 Python 2.x.
93
Antoine Pitrou5504e892008-12-06 21:27:53 +000094- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
95 which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
96
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +000097- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
98 method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
99 kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
100 object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.
Matthias Klose7e1b8fa2008-11-26 17:22:04 +0000101
Antoine Pitroubc420402008-12-07 20:14:49 +0000102- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
103 larger than 1.
104
Benjamin Peterson371ccfb2008-12-27 19:03:36 +0000105- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.
106
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +0000107Library
108-------
109
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000110- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
111 function without defining argtypes.
112
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000113- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
114 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
115 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
116 Jacques Frechet.
117
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000118- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
119
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000120- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
121 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
122
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000123- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
124 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
125 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
126
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000127- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
128 to the decimal module.
129
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000130- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
131 cast as floats.
132
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000133- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
134 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
135
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000136- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
137 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
138
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000139- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
140 the function is not a generator.
141
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000142- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
143 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
144
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000145- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
146 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
147
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000148- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
149
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000150- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
151
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000152- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
153 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
154
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000155- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
156 works as expected in the interactive environment.
157
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000158- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
159 Gabriel Genellina.
160
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000161- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
162 boundary.
163
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000164- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
165 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
166 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
167
168- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
169 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
170 Alexander Belopolsky.
171
172- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
173 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
174 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
175 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
176 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
177 Alexander Belopolsky.
178
179- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
180 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
181 Alexander Belopolsky.
182
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000183- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
184 a non-ASCII letter.
185
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000186- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
187
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000188- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
189 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
190
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000191- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
192 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
193 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
194
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000195- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
196 libs.
197
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000198- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
199 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
200
201- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
202 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
203 Content-Disposition headers.
204
205- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
206 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
207 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
208 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
209 doesn't configure logging.
210
211- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
212 exception.
213
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000214- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
215 statements.
216
217- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
218 not a malformed option.
219
220- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
221 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
222
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000223- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
224 the corresponding tests now pass.
225
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000226- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
227 it was calling the wrong open() function.
228
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000229- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
230 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
231 Content-Disposition headers.
232
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000233Tools/Demos
234-----------
235
236- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
237
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000238
239Build
240-----
241
242- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
243
244- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
245
246- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
247
248- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
249
250- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
251
252- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
253
254- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
255
256- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
257
258- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
259
260- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
261
262
263C-API
264-----
265
266- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
267
268- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
269 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
270
271- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
272 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
273
274
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000275Extension Modules
276-----------------
277
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000278- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
279 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
280 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
281
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000282- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
283
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000284- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
285 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
286 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
287
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000288- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
289
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000290- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
291
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000292- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
293 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000294
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000295- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
296 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
297 buffer.
298
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000299
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000300Docs
301----
302
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000303
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000304**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**