blob: ad3623c6b85ef8ddca50b34e25658f130e688e9b [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 Pitroub52ec782009-01-25 16:34:23 +000015- Issue #4753: By enabling a configure option named '--with-computed-gotos'
16 on compilers that support it (notably: gcc, SunPro, icc), the bytecode
17 evaluation loop is compiled with a new dispatch mechanism which gives
18 speedups of up to 20%, depending on the system, on various benchmarks.
19
Antoine Pitrou81fabdb2009-01-22 10:11:36 +000020- Issue #4874: Most builtin decoders now reject unicode input.
21
Mark Dickinson9ffc0202009-01-20 20:45:53 +000022- Issue #4842: Don't allow trailing 'L' when constructing an integer
23 from a string.
24
Benjamin Peterson05e782f2009-01-19 15:15:02 +000025- Issue #4991: os.fdopen now raises an OSError for invalid file descriptors.
26
Antoine Pitroue4bc7f62009-01-17 21:06:43 +000027- Issue #4838: When a module is deallocated, free the memory backing the
28 optional module state data.
29
Mark Dickinson8055afd2009-01-17 10:04:45 +000030- Issue #4910: Rename nb_long slot to nb_reserved, and change its
31 type to (void *).
32
Antoine Pitrou8d4e5052009-01-13 22:59:11 +000033- Issue #4935: The overflow checking code in the expandtabs() method common
34 to str, bytes and bytearray could be optimized away by the compiler, letting
35 the interpreter segfault instead of raising an error.
36
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcf343e012009-01-12 23:58:21 +000037- Issue #3720: Fix a crash when an iterator modifies its class and removes its
38 __next__ method.
39
Mark Dickinsone5e298f2009-01-12 20:49:19 +000040- Issue #4910: Builtin int() function and PyNumber_Long/PyNumber_Int API
41 function no longer attempt to call the __long__ slot to convert an object
42 to an integer. Only the __int__ and __trunc__ slots are examined.
43
Martin v. Löwis7c2b66c2009-01-12 08:21:03 +000044- Issue #4893: Use NT threading on CE.
45
Martin v. Löwisec59d042009-01-12 07:59:10 +000046- Issue #4915: Port sysmodule to Windows CE.
47
Antoine Pitrouab868312009-01-10 15:40:25 +000048- Issue #4868: utf-8, utf-16 and latin1 decoding are now 2x to 4x faster. The
49 common cases are optimized thanks to a dedicated fast path and a moderate
50 amount of loop unrolling.
51
Antoine Pitrou14b78f52009-01-09 22:27:08 +000052- Issue #4074: Change the criteria for doing a full garbage collection (i.e.
53 collecting the oldest generation) so that allocating lots of objects without
54 destroying them does not show quadratic performance. Based on a proposal by
55 Martin von Löwis at
56 http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2008-June/080579.html.
57
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +000058- Issue #4604: Some objects of the I/O library could still be used after
Antoine Pitrou8043cf82009-01-09 19:54:29 +000059 having been closed (for instance, a read() call could return some
60 previously buffered data). Patch by Dmitry Vasiliev.
61
Antoine Pitrou05608432009-01-09 18:53:14 +000062- Issue #4705: Fix the -u ("unbuffered binary stdout and stderr") command-line
63 flag to work properly. Furthermore, when specifying -u, the text stdout
64 and stderr streams have line-by-line buffering enabled (the default being
65 to buffer arbitrary chunks of data).
66
Raymond Hettinger35631532009-01-09 03:58:09 +000067- The internal table, _PyLong_DigitValue, is now an array of unsigned chars
68 instead of ints (reducing its size from 4 to 8 times thereby reducing
69 Python's overall memory).
70
Antoine Pitroud35cbf62009-01-06 19:02:24 +000071- Issue #1180193: When importing a module from a .pyc (or .pyo) file with
72 an existing .py counterpart, override the co_filename attributes of all
73 code objects if the original filename is obsolete (which can happen if the
74 file has been renamed, moved, or if it is accessed through different paths).
75 Patch by Ziga Seilnacht and Jean-Paul Calderone.
76
Antoine Pitrouc3b39242009-01-03 16:59:18 +000077- Issue #4580: Fix slicing of memoryviews when the item size is greater than
78 one byte. Also fixes the meaning of len() so that it returns the number of
79 items, rather than the size in bytes.
80
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +000081- Issue #4075: Use OutputDebugStringW in Py_FatalError.
82
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc374e2202009-01-01 23:05:36 +000083- Issue #4747: When the terminal does not use utf-8, executing a script with
84 non-ascii characters in its name could fail with a "SyntaxError: None" error.
85
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000086- Issue #4797: IOError.filename was not set when _fileio.FileIO failed to open
Hirokazu Yamamoto8ed9a802009-01-01 16:09:52 +000087 file with `bytes' filename on Windows.
Hirokazu Yamamoto0f22d692009-01-01 16:03:45 +000088
Antoine Pitrou7ddda782009-01-01 15:35:33 +000089- Issue #3680: Reference cycles created through a dict, set or deque iterator
90 did not get collected.
91
Nick Coghlanf1f2f682008-12-30 07:29:12 +000092- Issue #4701: PyObject_Hash now implicitly calls PyType_Ready on types
93 where the tp_hash and tp_dict slots are both NULL.
94
Georg Brandlccc47b62008-12-28 11:44:14 +000095- Issue #4759: None is now allowed as the first argument of
96 bytearray.translate(). It was always allowed for bytes.translate().
97
Skip Montanaro80072cb2008-12-23 03:51:14 +000098- Added test case to ensure attempts to read from a file opened for writing
99 fail.
100
Antoine Pitrou51f3ef92008-12-20 13:14:23 +0000101- Issue #3106: Speedup some comparisons (str/str and int/int).
102
Antoine Pitrouf289ae62008-12-18 11:06:25 +0000103- Issue #2183: Simplify and optimize bytecode for list, dict and set
104 comprehensions. Original patch for list comprehensions by Neal Norwitz.
105
Antoine Pitrou621601a2008-12-17 23:18:19 +0000106- Issue #2467: gc.DEBUG_STATS reported invalid elapsed times. Also, always
107 print elapsed times, not only when some objects are uncollectable /
108 unreachable. Original patch by Neil Schemenauer.
109
Mark Dickinson54bc1ec2008-12-17 16:19:07 +0000110- Issue #3439: Add a bit_length method to int.
111
Mark Dickinsonda2706b2008-12-11 18:03:03 +0000112- Issue #2173: When getting device encoding, check that return value of
113 nl_langinfo is not the empty string. This was causing silent build
114 failures on OS X.
115
Jeffrey Yasskinb9083f32008-12-11 06:18:33 +0000116- Issue #4597: Fixed several opcodes that weren't always propagating
117 exceptions.
118
119- Issue #4589: Fixed exception handling when the __exit__ function of a
Amaury Forgeot d'Arc10b24e82008-12-10 23:49:33 +0000120 context manager returns a value that cannot be converted to a bool.
121
Mark Dickinsonfd24b322008-12-06 15:33:31 +0000122- Issue #4445: Replace "sizeof(PyBytesObject)" with
123 "offsetof(PyBytesObject, ob_sval) + 1" when allocating memory for
124 bytes instances. On a typical machine this saves 3 bytes of memory
125 (on average) per allocation of a bytes instance.
126
Christian Heimesa872de52008-12-05 08:26:55 +0000127- Issue #4533: File read operation was dreadfully slow due to a slowly
128 growing read buffer. Fixed by using the same growth rate algorithm as
129 Python 2.x.
130
Antoine Pitrou5504e892008-12-06 21:27:53 +0000131- Issue #4509: Various issues surrounding resize of bytearray objects to
132 which there are buffer exports (e.g. memoryview instances).
133
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000134- Issue #4233: Changed semantic of ``_fileio.FileIO``'s ``close()``
135 method on file objects with closefd=False. The file descriptor is still
136 kept open but the file object behaves like a closed file. The ``FileIO``
137 object also got a new readonly attribute ``closefd``.
Matthias Klose7e1b8fa2008-11-26 17:22:04 +0000138
Antoine Pitroubc420402008-12-07 20:14:49 +0000139- Issue #4569: Interpreter crash when mutating a memoryview with an item size
140 larger than 1.
141
Benjamin Peterson371ccfb2008-12-27 19:03:36 +0000142- Issue #4748: Lambda generators no longer return a value.
143
Barry Warsawd8ccd1c2008-11-21 15:13:37 +0000144Library
145-------
146
Jesse Noller41faa542009-01-25 03:45:53 +0000147- Fix and properly document the multiprocessing module's logging
148 support, expose the internal levels and provide proper usage
149 examples.
150
Mark Dickinsoncddcf442009-01-24 21:46:33 +0000151- Issue #1672332: fix unpickling of subnormal floats, which was
152 producing a ValueError on some platforms.
153
Martin v. Löwisacbf4612009-01-24 16:19:45 +0000154- Issue #3881: Help Tcl to load even when started through the
155 unreadable local symlink to "Program Files" on Vista.
156
Martin v. Löwis59e47792009-01-24 14:10:07 +0000157- Issue #4710: Extract directories properly in the zipfile module;
158 allow adding directories to a zipfile.
159
Jesse Noller6fd47e22009-01-23 14:09:08 +0000160- Issue #3807: _multiprocessing build fails when configure is passed
161 --without-threads argument. When this occurs, _multiprocessing will
162 be disabled, and not compiled.
163
Antoine Pitrou08838b62009-01-21 00:55:13 +0000164- Issue #5008: When a file is opened in append mode with the new IO library,
165 do an explicit seek to the end of file (so that e.g. tell() returns the
166 file size rather than 0). This is consistent with the behaviour of the
167 traditional 2.x file object.
168
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000169- Issue #5013: Fixed a bug in FileHandler which occurred when the delay
170 parameter was set.
171
Mark Dickinson8dd05142009-01-20 20:43:58 +0000172- Issue #4842: Always append a trailing 'L' when pickling longs using
173 pickle protocol 0. When reading, the 'L' is optional.
174
Brett Cannonafccd632009-01-20 02:21:27 +0000175- Add the importlib package.
176
Jesse Noller9a0fc972009-01-18 21:12:58 +0000177- Issue #4301: Patch the logging module to add processName support, remove
178 _check_logger_class from multiprocessing.
179
Jesse Noller1cbb17a2009-01-18 19:45:18 +0000180- Issue #3325: Remove python2.x try: except: imports for old cPickle from
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000181 multiprocessing.
Jesse Nollerf70a5382009-01-18 19:44:02 +0000182
Benjamin Peterson9953a8d2009-01-17 04:15:01 +0000183- Issue #4959: inspect.formatargspec now works for keyword only arguments
184 without defaults.
185
Jesse Noller6214edd2009-01-19 16:23:53 +0000186- Issue #3321: _multiprocessing.Connection() doesn't check handle; added checks
187 for *nix machines for negative handles and large int handles. Without this check
188 it is possible to segfault the interpreter.
189
Jesse Nollerb0516a62009-01-18 03:11:38 +0000190- Issue #4449: AssertionError in mp_benchmarks.py, caused by an underlying issue
191 in sharedctypes.py.
192
193- Issue #1225107: inspect.isclass() returned True for instances with a custom
194 __getattr__.
195
Gregory P. Smithde3369f2009-01-12 04:50:11 +0000196- Issue #3826 and #4791: The socket module now closes the underlying socket
197 appropriately when it is being used via socket.makefile() objects
198 rather than delaying the close by waiting for garbage collection to do it.
199
Raymond Hettingerb8baf632009-01-14 02:20:07 +0000200- Issue #1696199: Add collections.Counter() for rapid and convenient
201 counting.
202
Antoine Pitrou308705e2009-01-10 16:22:51 +0000203- Issue #3860: GzipFile and BZ2File now support the context manager protocol.
204
Thomas Heller5e4e4272009-01-08 09:34:20 +0000205- Issue #4867: Fixed a crash in ctypes when passing a string to a
206 function without defining argtypes.
207
Antoine Pitrou42db3ef2009-01-04 21:37:59 +0000208- Issue #4272: Add an optional argument to the GzipFile constructor to override
209 the timestamp in the gzip stream. The default value remains the current time.
210 The information can be used by e.g. gunzip when decompressing. Patch by
211 Jacques Frechet.
212
Mark Dickinson315a20a2009-01-04 21:34:18 +0000213- Restore Python 2.3 compatibility for decimal.py.
214
Guilherme Polo3f5f8222009-01-03 22:00:39 +0000215- Issue #3638: Remove functions from _tkinter module level that depend on
216 TkappObject to work with multiple threads.
217
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000218- Issue #4718: Adapt the wsgiref package so that it actually works with
219 Python 3.x, in accordance with the `official amendments of the spec
Antoine Pitrou38a66ad2009-01-03 18:41:49 +0000220 <http://www.wsgi.org/wsgi/Amendments_1.0>`_.
221
Raymond Hettinger771ed762009-01-03 19:20:32 +0000222- Issue #4796: Added Decimal.from_float() and Context.create_decimal_from_float()
223 to the decimal module.
224
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000225- Fractions.from_float() no longer loses precision for integers too big to
226 cast as floats.
227
Mark Dickinsonf9236412009-01-02 23:23:21 +0000228- Issue #4812: add missing underscore prefix to some internal-use-only
229 constants in the decimal module. (Dec_0 becomes _Dec_0, etc.)
230
Georg Brandl3a9b0622009-01-03 22:07:57 +0000231- Issue 4790: The nsmallest() and nlargest() functions in the heapq module
232 did unnecessary work in the common case where no key function was specified.
233
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000234- Issue #4795: inspect.isgeneratorfunction() returns False instead of None when
235 the function is not a generator.
236
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000237- Issue #4702: Throwing a DistutilsPlatformError instead of IOError in case
238 no MSVC compiler is found under Windows. Original patch by Philip Jenvey.
Tarek Ziadé9df8ce32008-12-30 23:09:20 +0000239
Vinay Sajip6268cbc2009-01-21 00:19:28 +0000240- Issue #4646: distutils was choking on empty options arg in the setup
Tarek Ziadé4450dcf2008-12-29 22:38:38 +0000241 function. Original patch by Thomas Heller.
242
Martin v. Löwis1f1620e2008-12-29 16:27:13 +0000243- Issue #3767: Convert Tk object to string in tkColorChooser.
244
Martin v. Löwise354d782008-12-29 16:03:04 +0000245- Issue #3248: Allow placing ScrolledText in a PanedWindow.
246
Antoine Pitrou5acd41e2008-12-28 14:29:00 +0000247- Issue #4444: Allow assertRaises() to be used as a context handler, so that
248 the code under test can be written inline if more practical.
249
Georg Brandldb7b6b92009-01-01 15:53:14 +0000250- Issue #4739: Add pydoc help topics for symbols, so that e.g. help('@')
251 works as expected in the interactive environment.
252
Antoine Pitroudb5fe662008-12-27 15:50:40 +0000253- Issue #4756: zipfile.is_zipfile() now supports file-like objects. Patch by
254 Gabriel Genellina.
255
Antoine Pitrou180a3362008-12-14 16:36:46 +0000256- Issue #4574: reading an UTF16-encoded text file crashes if \r on 64-char
257 boundary.
258
Nick Coghlanf088e5e2008-12-14 11:50:48 +0000259- Issue #4223: inspect.getsource() will now correctly display source code
260 for packages loaded via zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302
261 loader). Original patch by Alexander Belopolsky.
262
263- Issue #4201: pdb can now access and display source code loaded via
264 zipimport (or any other conformant PEP 302 loader). Original patch by
265 Alexander Belopolsky.
266
267- Issue #4197: doctests in modules loaded via zipimport (or any other PEP
268 302 conformant loader) will now work correctly in most cases (they
269 are still subject to the constraints that exist for all code running
270 from inside a module loaded via a PEP 302 loader and attempting to
271 perform IO operations based on __file__). Original patch by
272 Alexander Belopolsky.
273
274- Issues #4082 and #4512: Add runpy support to zipimport in a manner that
275 allows backporting to maintenance branches. Original patch by
276 Alexander Belopolsky.
277
Antoine Pitrou7c59bc62008-12-13 23:20:54 +0000278- Issue #4163: textwrap module: allow word splitting on a hyphen preceded by
279 a non-ASCII letter.
280
Lars Gustäbel43fcf3a2008-12-12 14:58:38 +0000281- Issue #4616: TarFile.utime(): Restore directory times on Windows.
282
Benjamin Peterson433f32c2008-12-12 01:25:05 +0000283- Issue #4021: tokenize.detect_encoding() now raises a SyntaxError when the
284 codec cannot be found. This is for compatibility with the builtin behavior.
285
Facundo Batista708d5812008-12-11 04:20:07 +0000286- Issue #4084: Fix max, min, max_mag and min_mag Decimal methods to
287 give correct results in the case where one argument is a quiet NaN
288 and the other is a finite number that requires rounding.
289
Skip Montanaroc1ce2862008-12-06 17:25:02 +0000290- Issue #4483: _dbm module now builds on systems with gdbm & gdbm_compat
291 libs.
292
Georg Brandlf9734072008-12-07 15:30:06 +0000293- Added the subprocess.check_call_output() convenience function to get output
294 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
295
296- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
297 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
298 Content-Disposition headers.
299
300- Issue #4384: Added logging integration with warnings module using
301 captureWarnings(). This change includes a NullHandler which does nothing;
302 it will be of use to library developers who want to avoid the "No handlers
303 could be found for logger XXX" message which can appear if the library user
304 doesn't configure logging.
305
306- Issue #3741: DISTUTILS_USE_SDK set causes msvc9compiler.py to raise an
307 exception.
308
Georg Brandleee31162008-12-07 15:15:22 +0000309- Issue #4529: fix the parser module's validation of try-except-finally
310 statements.
311
312- Issue #4458: getopt.gnu_getopt() now recognizes a single "-" as an argument,
313 not a malformed option.
314
315- Added the subprocess.check_output() convenience function to get output
316 from a subprocess on success or raise an exception on error.
317
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc9d4742008-12-05 01:40:43 +0000318- Issue #4542: On Windows, binascii.crc32 still accepted str as binary input;
319 the corresponding tests now pass.
320
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcbc2ce572008-12-05 01:02:21 +0000321- Issue #4537: webbrowser.UnixBrowser would fail to open the browser because
322 it was calling the wrong open() function.
323
Fred Drake9a0a65b2008-12-04 19:24:50 +0000324- Issue #1055234: cgi.parse_header(): Fixed parsing of header parameters to
325 support unusual filenames (such as those containing semi-colons) in
326 Content-Disposition headers.
327
Matthias Klose2c7e3ee2009-01-10 17:08:25 +0000328- Issue #4861: ctypes.util.find_library(): Robustify. Fix library detection on
329 biarch systems. Try to rely on ldconfig only, without using objdump and gcc.
330
Antoine Pitrou2a013ea2008-12-27 20:39:28 +0000331Tools/Demos
332-----------
333
334- Issue #4677: add two list comprehension tests to pybench.
335
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000336
337Build
338-----
339
Martin v. Löwise97637d2009-01-11 09:45:11 +0000340- Issue #4895: Use _strdup on Windows CE.
341
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000342- Issue #4472: "configure --enable-shared" now works on OSX
343
344- Issues #4728 and #4060: WORDS_BIGEDIAN is now correct in Universal builds.
345
346- Issue #4389: Add icon to the uninstall entry in "add-and-remove-programs".
347
348- Issue #4289: Remove Cancel button from AdvancedDlg.
349
350- Issue #1656675: Register a drop handler for .py* files on Windows.
351
352- Issue #4120: Exclude manifest from extension modules in VS2008.
353
354- Issue #4091: Install pythonxy.dll in system32 again.
355
356- Issue #4018: Disable "for me" installations on Vista.
357
358- Issue #3758: Add ``patchcheck`` build target to .PHONY.
359
360- Issue #4204: Fixed module build errors on FreeBSD 4.
361
362
363C-API
364-----
365
366- Issue #4720: The format for PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords can begin with '|'.
367
368- Issue #3632: from the gdb debugger, the 'pyo' macro can now be called when
369 the GIL is released, or owned by another thread.
370
371- Issue #4122: On Windows, fix a compilation error when using the
372 Py_UNICODE_ISSPACE macro in an extension module.
373
374
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000375Extension Modules
376-----------------
377
Mark Dickinson29500f62009-01-15 15:36:10 +0000378- Issue #4397: Fix occasional test_socket failure on OS X.
379
Martin v. Löwisa9b54c72009-01-11 09:30:50 +0000380- Issue #4279: Fix build of parsermodule under Cygwin.
381
Antoine Pitroubcd5cbe2009-01-08 21:17:16 +0000382- Issue #4751: hashlib now releases the GIL when hashing large buffers
383 (with a hardwired threshold of 2048 bytes), allowing better parallelization
384 on multi-CPU systems. Contributed by Lukas Lueg (ebfe) and Victor Stinner.
385
Martin v. Löwis5c88d812009-01-02 20:47:48 +0000386- Issue #4051: Prevent conflict of UNICODE macros in cPickle.
387
Antoine Pitrou31f30b12009-01-02 17:34:35 +0000388- Issue #4738: Each zlib object now has a separate lock, allowing to compress
389 or decompress several streams at once on multi-CPU systems. Also, the GIL
390 is now released when computing the CRC of a large buffer. Patch by ebfe.
391
Georg Brandlb1441c72009-01-03 22:33:39 +0000392- Issue #4228: Pack negative values the same way as 2.4 in struct's L format.
393
Martin v. Löwis05bfe1f2008-12-29 18:21:47 +0000394- Issue #1040026: Fix os.times result on systems where HZ is incorrect.
395
Mark Dickinsone675f082008-12-11 21:56:00 +0000396- Issues #3167, #3682: Fix test_math failures for log, log10 on Solaris,
397 OpenBSD.
Amaury Forgeot d'Arcefae8c42008-11-21 23:08:09 +0000398
Antoine Pitrou3ad3a0d2008-12-18 17:08:32 +0000399- Issue #4583: array.array would not always prohibit resizing when a buffer
400 has been exported, resulting in an interpreter crash when accessing the
401 buffer.
402
Martin v. Löwis841edad2008-11-30 10:36:49 +0000403
Brett Cannon7317c1e2008-11-25 19:19:17 +0000404Docs
405----
406
Georg Brandl52b92cc2008-05-25 09:43:03 +0000407
Skip Montanaroe5d7f7f2002-09-20 14:16:59 +0000408**(For information about older versions, consult the HISTORY file.)**