Python-announce-list May 2003

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RELEASED Python 2.2.3 (final)
by Barry Warsaw 30 May '03

30 May '03

I'm happy to announce the release of Python 2.2.3 (final). This is a bug fix release for the stable Python 2.2 code line. It contains more than 40 bug fixes and memory leak patches since Python 2.2.2, and all Python 2.2 users are encouraged to upgrade. The new release is available here: http://www.python.org/2.2.3/ For full details, see the release notes at http://www.python.org/2.2.3/NEWS.txt There are a small number of minor incompatibilities with Python 2.2.2; for details see: http://www.python.org/2.2.3/bugs.html Perhaps the most important is that the Bastion.py and rexec.py modules have been disabled, since we do not deem them to be safe. As usual, a Windows installer and a Unix/Linux source tarball are made available. The documentation has been updated as well, and is available both on-line and in many different formats. At the moment, no Mac version or Linux RPMs are available, although I expect them to appear soon. On behalf of Guido, I'd like to thank everyone who contributed to this release, and who continue to ensure Python's success. Enjoy, -Barry

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ANN: AsciiDoc 3.2 released
by srackham＠methods.co.nz 30 May '03

30 May '03

AsciiDoc -------- AsciiDoc is an uncomplicated text document format for writing articles, manuals and UNIX man pages. AsciiDoc files can be translated to HTML: (with or without stylesheets); DocBook (articles, books and refentry documents); and LinuxDoc using the asciidoc(1) command. AsciiDoc can also be used to build and maintain websites. AsciiDoc is highly configurable: both the AsciiDoc source file syntax and the backend output markups (which can be almost any type of SGML/XML markup) can be customized and extended by user. Requisites ---------- Python 1.5.2 or higher. Obtaining AsciiDoc ------------------ The latest AsciiDoc version and online documentation can be found at the AsciiDoc website http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/ AsciiDoc is also hosted at the SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/asciidoc/ Best regards, --- Stuart Rackham <srackham(a)methods.co.nz>

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ZODB 3.2 beta 1 released
by Jeremy Hylton 30 May '03

30 May '03

I'm pleased to announce the release of ZODB 3.2 beta 1. We have completed all the new features planned for ZODB 3.2 and have wrung out a number of bugs. I expect this release is still a bit rough, so I expect to do another beta release. ZODB 3.2 has a number of new features and improvements over ZODB 3.1: - improve performance and stability of ZEO - new ZEO authentication protocol - new configuration language, ZConfig, for databases, storages, and ZEO servers - many bug fixes This release of ZODB has been tested with Python 2.1.3, 2.2.3, and 2.3b1. It should also be compatible with Zope 2.6; Zope users should be able to install the new ZODB code on top of an existing Zope 2.6 installation. You can download the source release and Windows installers for 2.1 and 2.2 from http://www.zope.org/Products/ZODB3.2. I've included the most recent entries from NEWS.txt below. Jeremy What's new in ZODB3 3.2 beta 1 ============================== Release date: 30-May-2003 ZODB ---- Invalidations are now processed atomically. Each transaction will see all the changes caused by an earlier transaction or none of them. Before this patch, it was possible for a transaction to see invalid data because it saw only a subset of the invalidations. This is the most likely cause of reported BTrees corruption, where keys were stored in the wrong bucket. When a BTree bucket splits, the bucket and the bucket's parent are both modified. If a transaction sees the invalidation for the bucket but not the parent, the BTree in memory will be internally inconsistent and keys can be put in the wrong bucket. The atomic invalidation fix prevents this problem. A number of minor reference count fixes in the object cache were fixed. That's the cPickleCache.c file. It was possible for a transaction that failed in tpc_finish() to lose the traceback that caused the failure. The transaction code was fixed to report the original error as well as any errors that occur while trying to recover from the original error. The "other" argument to copyTransactionsFrom() only needs to have an .iterator() method. For convenience, change FileStorage's and BDBFullStorage's iterator to have this method, which just returns self. Mount points are now visible from mounted objects. Fixed memory leak involving database connections and caches. When a connection or database was closed, the cache and database leaked, because of a circular reference involving the cache. Fixed the cache to explicitly clear out its contents when its connection is closed. The ZODB cache has fewer methods. It used to expose methods that could mutate the dictionary, which allowed users to violate internal invariants. ZConfig ------- It is now possible to configure ZODB databases and storages and ZEO servers using ZConfig. ZEO & zdaemon ------------- ZEO now supports authenticated client connections. The default authentication protocol uses a hash-based challenge-response protocol to prove identity and establish a session key for message authentication. The architecture is pluggable to allow third-parties to developer better authentication protocols. There is a new HOWTO for running a ZEO server. The draft in this release is incomplete, but provides more guidance than previous releases. See the file Doc/ZEO/howto.txt. The ZEO storage server's transaction timeout feature was refactored and made slightly more rebust. A new ZEO utility script, ZEO/mkzeoinst.py, was added. This creates a standard directory structure and writes a configuration file with mostly default values, and a bootstrap script that can be used to manage and monitor the server using zdctl.py (see below). Much work was done to improve zdaemon's zdctl.py and zdrun.py scripts. (In the alpha 1 release, zdrun.py was called zdaemon.py, but installing it in <prefix>/bin caused much breakage due to the name conflict with the zdaemon package.) Together with the new mkzeoinst.py script, this makes controlling a ZEO server a breeze. A ZEO client will not read from its cache during cache verification. This fix was necessary to prevent the client from reading inconsistent data. The isReadOnly() method of a ZEO client was fixed to return the false when the client is connected to a read-only fallback server. The sync() method of ClientStorage and the pending() method of a zrpc connection now do both input and output. The short_repr() function used to generate log messages was fixed so that it does not blow up creating a repr of very long tuples. Storages -------- FileStorage has a new pack() implementation that fixes several reported problems that could lead to data loss. Two small bugs were fixed in DemoStorage. undoLog() did not handle its arguments correctly and pack() could accidentally delete objects created in versions. Fixed trivial bug in fsrecover that prevented it from working at all. FileStorage will use fsync() on Windows starting with Python 2.2.3. FileStorage's commit version was fixed. It used to stop after the first object, leaving all the other objects in the version. BTrees ------ Trying to store an object of a non-integer type into an IIBTree or OIBTree could leave the bucket in a variety of insane states. For example, trying b[obj] = "I'm a string, not an integer" where b is an OIBTree. This manifested as a refcount leak in the test suite, but could have been much worse (most likely in real life is that a seemingly arbitrary existing key would "go missing"). When deleting the first child of a BTree node with more than one child, a reference to the second child leaked. This could cause the entire bucket chain to leak (not be collected as garbage despite not being referenced anymore). Other minor BTree leak scenarios were also fixed. Tools ----- New tool zeoqueue.py for parsing ZEO log files, looking for blocked transactions. New tool repozo.py (originally by Anthony Baxter) for performing incremental backups of Data.fs files. The fsrecover.py script now does a better job of recovering from errors the occur in the middle of a transaction record. Fixed several bugs that caused partial or total failures in earlier versions.

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First EuroPython2003 Interview
by Tom Deprez 30 May '03

30 May '03

Hi! As last year we plan to close the gap until EuroPython2003 with interviews. Moshe Zadka is the first of this year to give an interview. Interested? Have look at: http://www.europython.org/other/interviews/entries/moshe_zadka Regards, EuroPython.

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Today is the last day for nominations for the Python ActiveAward winner
by David Ascher 30 May '03

30 May '03

For the third year, ActiveState is running the ActiveAwards -- a way to recognize some of the most influential, helpful, or important people in the world of open source languages. Nominate your favorites in the Programmers' Choice Active Awards. Until June 1, 2003, you can select the one programmer that you think has done the most for Python (and other languages if you so choose). We'll tally up the nominees and present five finalists in each category. Voting for the winner will take place from June 3 to June 30, 2003. See the details and enter your favorites at: http://www.activestate.com/Corporate/ActiveAwards/ Cheers, -- David Ascher ActiveState PS: Winners for previous years were: 2002 Programmers' Choice: Robin Dunn 2002 Activators' Choice: Alex Martelli 2001 Programmers' Choice: Christian Tismer 2001 Activators' Choice: Greg Ward

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ANN: dnspython 1.0.0a1
by Bob Halley 30 May '03

30 May '03

I'm pleased to announce the initial release of dnspython! INTRODUCTION dnspython is a DNS toolkit for Python. It supports all of the common record types, and will support all types. It can be used for queries, zone transfers, and dynamic updates. It supports TSIG authenticated messages and EDNS0. dnspython provides both high and low level access to DNS. The high level classes perform queries for data of a given name, type, and class, and return an answer set. The low level classes allow direct manipulation of DNS zones, messages, names, and records. To see a few of the ways dnspython can be used, look at http://www.dnspython.org/examples.html dnspython originated at Nominum where it was developed to facilitate the testing of DNS software. Nominum has generously allowed it to be open sourced under a BSD-style license, and helps support its future development by continuing to employ the author :). ABOUT THIS RELEASE This is dnspython 1.0.0a1, the first release of dnspython. Although the software is already useful, there are a number of things to do before the first stable release, including: implementing the rest of the DNS rdata types, improving the documentation, and thorough testing. REQUIREMENTS Python 2.2 or later. INSTALLATION To build and install dnspython, type python setup.py install HOME PAGE For the latest in releases, documentation, and information, visit the dnspython home page at http://www.dnspython.org/ DOCUMENTATION Documentation is sparse at the moment. Use pydoc or read the HTML documentation at the dnspython home page. BUG REPORTS Bug reports may be sent to bugs(a)dnspython.org MAILING LISTS A number of mailing lists are available. Visit the dnspython home page to subscribe or unsubscribe.

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ANNOUNCE: Sitereaper 0.1 released
by Neil Schemenauer 29 May '03

29 May '03

Version 0.1 of the Sitereaper package is available from http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/sitereaper/ Sitereaper is a link-checker that can optionally spell-check and do HTML validation while checking links. Sitereaper is developed using Python 2.2. -- Neil Schemenauer <nas(a)mems-exchange.org> http://www.mems-exchange.org/

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ANNOUNCE: Dulcinea 0.1 released
by Neil Schemenauer 29 May '03

29 May '03

Version 0.1 of the Dulcinea package is available from http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/dulcinea/ Dulcinea is a collection of modules useful for developing applications with Quixote and the ZODB, including: * A set of modules that simplify using the ZODB. * Some useful classes for use with Quixote. * Various miscellaneous modules that we've found to be useful. -- Neil Schemenauer <nas(a)mems-exchange.org> http://www.mems-exchange.org/

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ANN: PyOSG 0.4.0 - Python OpenSceneGraph bindings
by gideon may 29 May '03

29 May '03

Announcing Python OpenSceneGraph bindings version 0.4.0 alpha PyOSG is a wrapper library for the the OpenSceneGraph real-time visualisation library and Python. It is available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pyosg The Open Scene Graph is a cross-platform C++/OpenGL library for the real-time visualization. Uses range from visual simulation, scientific modeling, virtual reality through to games. OpenSceneGraph is available at http://www.openscenegraph.org/ PyOSG uses the Boost.Python library, which enables a very powerful set of features like subclassing C++ classes in Python, default arguments, function overloading. Boost.Python is available at http://www.boost.org/ Requirements ------------ Python 2.2.X OpenSceneGraph 0.9.4 Producer 0.8.2-2 Boost.Python 1.30.0 Platforms --------- PyOSG has been tested on Windows 2000/NT using the MSVC.Net 7.0 compiler and Linux 2.4.X using the gcc 3.2 C++ compiler. Best regards, gideon may

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ANN: Installer 5b5_3
by Gordon McMillan 29 May '03

29 May '03

A bug fix release (5b5_3) is available here: http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/installer_dnld.html The major fix is to Windows onefile support which is completely broken in earlier 5b5 releases. Another fix (UPX binaries caching code) applies to both Linux and Windows. Platforms: Windows Linux Unix (relying on volunteers) Python versions: Python 1.5 to 2.3 What is it: The Installer package is any easy way to deploy Python apps to systems without Python installed (or with incompatible Pythons installed). Installer support single-file and single-directory deployments. On Windows, Installer supports COM, including in-process COM servers. License: MIT style. Contact: gmcm(a)hypernet.com <P><A HREF="http://www.mcmillan-inc.com/installer_dnld.html">Installer Release 5b5_3/A>Easy Python app deployment. (29-May- 2003).

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Python-announce-list May 2003