Abstract

This document describes the development and release schedule forPython 2.4. The schedule primarily concerns itself with PEP-sizeditems. Small features may be added up to and including the firstbeta release. Bugs may be fixed until the final release.

There will be at least two alpha releases, two beta releases, andone release candidate. The release date was 30th November, 2004.

Release Manager

Anthony Baxter

Martin von Lowis is building the Windows installers, Fred thedoc packages, Sean the RPMs.

Release Schedule

• July 9: alpha 1 [completed]
• August 5/6: alpha 2 [completed]
• Sept 3: alpha 3 [completed]
• October 15: beta 1 [completed]
• November 3: beta 2 [completed]
• November 18: release candidate 1 [completed]
• November 30: final [completed]

Completed features for 2.4

• PEP 218 Builtin Set Objects.
• PEP 289 Generator expressions.
• PEP 292 Simpler String Substitutions to be implemented as a module.
• PEP 318: Function/method decorator syntax, using @syntax
• PEP 322 Reverse Iteration.
• PEP 327: A Decimal package for fixed precision arithmetic.
• PEP 328: Multi-line Imports
• Encapsulate the decorate-sort-undecorate pattern in a keyword forlist.sort().
• Added a builtin calledsorted() which may be used in expressions.
• Theitertools module has two new functions,tee() andgroupby().
• Add acollections module with adeque() object.
• Add two statistical/reduction functions,nlargest() andnsmallest()to theheapq module.
• Python’s windows installer now uses MSI

Deferred until 2.5

• Deprecate and/or remove the modules listed inPEP 4 (posixfile,gopherlib,pre,others)
• Remove support for platforms as described inPEP 11.
• Finish implementing the Distutilsbdist_dpkg command. (AMK)
• Add support for reading shadow passwords[1]
• It would be nice if the built-in SSL socket type could be usedfor non-blocking SSL I/O. Currently packages such as Twistedwhich implement async servers using SSL have to require third-partypackages such as pyopenssl.
• AST-based compiler: this branch was not completed in time for2.4, but will land on the trunk some time after 2.4 final isout, for inclusion in 2.5.
• reST is going to be used a lot in Zope3. Maybe it could becomea standard library module? (Since reST’s author thinks it’s tooinstable, I’m inclined not to do this.)

Ongoing tasks

The following are ongoing TO-DO items which we should attempt towork on without hoping for completion by any particular date.

• Documentation: complete the distribution and installationmanuals.
• Documentation: complete the documentation for new-styleclasses.
• Look over theDemos/ directory and update where required (AndrewKuchling has done a lot of this)
• New tests.
• Fix doc bugs on SF.
• Remove use of deprecated features in the core.
• Document deprecated features appropriately.
• Mark deprecated C APIs withPy_DEPRECATED.
• Deprecate modules which are unmaintained, or perhaps make a newcategory for modules ‘Unmaintained’
• In general, lots of cleanup so it is easier to move forward.

Open issues

None at this time.

Carryover features from Python 2.3

• The import lock could use some redesign.[2]
• A nicer API to open text files, replacing the ugly (in somepeople’s eyes) “U” mode flag. There’s a proposal out there tohave a new built-in typetextfile(filename,mode,encoding).(Shouldn’t it have abufsize argument too?)
• New widgets for Tkinter???

  Has anyone gotten the time for this?Are there any newwidgets in Tk 8.4? Note that we’ve got better Tix supportalready (though not on Windows yet).

• PEP 304 (Controlling Generation of Bytecode Files by Montanaro)seems to have lost steam.
• For a class defined inside another class, the__name__ should be“outer.inner”, and pickling should work. ([3]. I’m nolonger certain this is easy or even right.)
• Decide on a clearer deprecation policy (especially for modules)and act on it. For a start, see this message from Neal Norwitz[4].There seems insufficient interest in moving this further in anorganized fashion, and it’s not particularly important.
• Provide alternatives for common uses of thetypes module;Skip Montanaro has posted a proto-PEP for this idea[5].There hasn’t been any progress on this, AFAICT.
• Use pending deprecation for thetypes andstring modules. Thisrequires providing alternatives for the parts that aren’tcovered yet (e.g.string.whitespace andtypes.TracebackType).It seems we can’t get consensus on this.
• PEP 262 Database of Installed Python Packages (Kuchling)

  This turns out to be useful for Jack Jansen’s Python installer,so the database is worth implementing. Code will go insandbox/pep262.

• PEP 269 Pgen Module for Python (Riehl)

  (Some necessary changes are in; thepgen module itself needs tomature more.)

• PEP 266 Optimizing Global Variable/Attribute Access (Montanaro)

  PEP 267 Optimized Access to Module Namespaces (Hylton)

  PEP 280 Optimizing access to globals (van Rossum)

  These are basically three friendly competing proposals. Jeremyhas made a little progress with a new compiler, but it’s goingslowly and the compiler is only the first step. Maybe we’ll beable to refactor the compiler in this release. I’m tempted tosay we won’t hold our breath.

• Lazily tracking tuples?[6][7]Not much enthusiasm I believe.
• PEP 286 Enhanced Argument Tuples (von Loewis)

  I haven’t had the time to review this thoroughly. It seems adeep optimization hack (also makes better correctness guaranteesthough).

• Make ‘as’ a keyword. It has been a pseudo-keyword long enough.Too much effort to bother.

References

Copyright

This document has been placed in the public domain.