Mailman 3 August 2006 - Python-announce-list

python-dev Summary for 2006-07-16 through 2006-07-31
by steven.bethard＠gmail.com 15 Aug '06

15 Aug '06

python-dev Summary for 2006-07-16 through 2006-07-31 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ .. contents:: [The HTML version of this Summary is available at http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2006-07-16_2006-07-31] ============= Announcements ============= ------------------- Python 2.5 schedule ------------------- After inserting a third beta release to allow some more time for testing the new features, Python continues to make progress towards the final Python 2.5 release. See `PEP 356`_ for more details and the full schedule. .. _PEP 356: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0356/ Contributing threads: - `outstanding bugs to fix for 2.5 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067680.html>`__ - `Py2.5 release schedule <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067768.html>`__ ------------------------------- How to submit a patch to Python ------------------------------- Just a few reminders for all those still new to python-dev. When submitting a new patch to SourceForge, don't assign it to anyone. Most python developers get email notifications for new patches and will assign it to themselves if appropriate. If you feel like the approach the patch takes might need discussion, it's alright to present it to python-dev and ask for some feedback. If you do, be sure to put the patch number and url (e.g. http://bugs.python.org/<sourceforge_id>) near the top of the message, so that developers can easily find it. And if you don't want to wait for your patch to be looked at (which may take some time as all developers are volunteers), a few of the folks here, including Martin v. Lowis, have offered a five-for-one deal. Simply find five other patches, and check them for things like: * Does the code look okay? * Does Python build with it applied? * Do all unit tests pass? * Does the patch have tests? * Does the patch have documentation? Then post your notes to the five patch trackers and post a final message to python-dev indicating the patches you reviewed and the patch which you'd like to have someone look at for you. Contributing threads: - `new guy <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067509.html>`__ - `first draft of bug guidelines for www.python.org/dev/ <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067601.html>`__ - `Patch submitted, now what? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067858.html>`__ ---------------------------------------- Demos of trackers to replace SourceForge ---------------------------------------- There are currently three potential trackers that have successfully imported the SourceForge data with demos online: roundup_, jira_ and launchpad_. Try 'em out, and send your discussions and comments to infrastructure(a)python.org and put your reports and reviews `on the wiki`_. .. _roundup: http://efod.se/python-tracker/ .. _jira: http://jira.python.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa .. _launchpad: https://demo.launchpad.net/products/python/+bugs .. _on the wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/CallForTrackers Contributing thread: - `More tracker demos online <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067686.html>`__ ========= Summaries ========= ------------------------------ Restricted execution in Python ------------------------------ Brett Cannon decided this fortnight to go for an all-out capabilities based restricted execution design, and posted a `new design document`_. As part of this work, Brett planned to rewrite most of the import machinery in pure Python code, hopefully cleaning up some of the idiosyncrasies of the current import.c mechanisms, and allowing him to do things like restrict imports to only .py files, not .pyc files. Armin Rigo pointed out that a good place to start would be the `PyPy import implementation`_. On the restricted execution front, one of the things that is now likely to happen in Brett's sandboxing branch is that ``object.__subclasses__()`` and dangerous constructors like the one for the code object will be completely removed from the Python level. This means a few backwards incompatible changes, but Brett suggested that they should only break pretty advanced and esoteric Python code. Since it's for his Ph.D. dissertation, he didn't want to tie his hands by requiring full backwards compatibility, and he was fine with waiting to merge his branch until Python 3000. .. _new design document: http://svn.python.org/view/python/branches/bcannon-sandboxing/securing_pyth… .. _PyPy import implementation: http://codespeak.net/svn/pypy/dist/pypy/module/__builtin__/importing.py Contributing threads: - `Capabilities / Restricted Execution <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067481.html>`__ - `new security doc using object-capabilities <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067555.html>`__ -------------------------- Character case and locales -------------------------- Mihai Ibanescu asked about a `bug in the logging module`_ due to the fact that ``'INFO'.lower() != 'info'`` in some locales. Marc-Andre Lemburg and Martin v. Lowis explained that since in Unicode, nearly all case-conversions are only script-dependent, not language-dependent, ``u'INFO'.lower() == u'info'`` should always be true. .. _bug in the logging module: http://bugs.python.org/1524081 Contributing thread: - `logging module broken because of locale <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067504.html>`__ ----------------------------------------------- Progress on the C version of the decimal module ----------------------------------------------- After looking at the current progress in converting the decimal module to C, Raymond Hettinger suggested that rather than using the Python implementation as an outline of the C implementation, a separate C implementation should be developed and then later wrapped as necessary to provide the Python APIs. Tim Peters explained their incremental approach: leaving most of the module written in Python, and converting methods to C code one at a time. Raymond had originally supported this approach, but after viewing the current C code, thought that it would result in C code that was too complex and convoluted. There was some extended discussion on the mechanism in the current decimal module for holding flags, which uses a dict mapping error types to the counts of their occurrences. Raymond in particular wanted the C decimal module to be able to change this API if it was too complex to implement. A number of others agreed that the API had been a bad decision, and it looked like there would at least be a note in the documentation for Python 2.5 suggesting that users should not rely on the counting feature. Contributing thread: - `Strategy for converting the decimal module to C <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067537.html>`__ --------------------------------------- PEP 357: Integer clipping and __index__ --------------------------------------- Armin Rigo pointed out that the current implementation of ``__index__()`` was incorrectly truncating long integers:: >>> (2**100).__index__() 2147483647 As the original ``__index__()`` method was intended only to allow things other than plain Python ints as slice indices, truncating to the maximum value was fine. However, when ``__index__()`` also became the "can you faithfully act like an integer" check, this truncation was no longer acceptable. Nick Coghlan spent some time reworking the `PEP 357`_ C API so that all the use cases of ``__index__()`` were covered. His `patch for fixing __index__`_ changes the nb_index slot to return a PyInt or PyLong instead of a C int, and introduces the C API functions PyNumber_Index, PyNumber_AsSsize_t and PyNumber_AsClippedSsize_t(), all of which have an output variable signifying whether or not the object they received had an ``__index__`` method. .. _PEP 357: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0357/ .. _patch for fixing __index__: http://bugs.python.org/1530738 Contributing thread: - `Bad interaction of __index__ and sequence repeat <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067774.html>`__ -------------------------------------------------------- PEP 302: Non-importer objects on sys.path_importer_cache -------------------------------------------------------- Phillip J. Eby asked about how to best fix the non-PEP-302 compliant changes to the import machinery made by the Need for Speed Sprint. `PEP 302`_ indicates that everything on sys.path_importer_cache should be either None or a valid importer object, but the Need for Speed changes added True and False values to that as well. After getting approval to make the appropriate changes necessary to stay PEP-302-compliant, Phillip added ``imp.NullImporter`` to replace False values, and kept ``None`` to mean that the builtin import machinery should be used. .. _PEP 302: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0302/ Contributing threads: - `Undocumented PEP 302 protocol change by need-for-speed sprint <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067587.html>`__ - `Release manager pronouncement needed: PEP 302 Fix <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067713.html>`__ --------------------------------------------------------------- Running the test suites of user projects when Python is updated --------------------------------------------------------------- Grig Gheorghiu volunteered to do some of the work to get community buildbots running, that is, buildbots running the test suites of Python user projects whenever the Python core repository was updated. People were quite enthusiastic and Martin v. Lowis offered to set up a post-commit hook on the python repository to trigger a build on Grig's buildbots if necessary. Contributing threads: - `Community buildbots <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067476.html>`__ - `Community buildbots (was Re: User's complaints) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067477.html>`__ - `Community buildbots -- reprise <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067688.html>`__ -------------------------------------- Safe dumper/loader using Python syntax -------------------------------------- Sylvain Fourmanoit presented his miniconf_ module which is a safe and cross-version dumper/loader for simple objects using the Python syntax. People generally liked the module, and Phillip J. Eby helped Sylvain clean up the implementation a bit. There was some discussion of including it in the Python 2.6 stdlib and perhaps Bob Ippolito's simplejson_ module alongside it. .. _miniconf: http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi?:action=display&name=miniconf .. _simplejson: http://undefined.org/python/#simplejson Contributing threads: - `New miniconf module <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067710.html>`__ - `JSON implementation in Python 2.6 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067720.html>`__ ------------------------------- Programmatically sending Ctrl-C ------------------------------- In testing his `patch to make sockets and Ctrl-C play nicely`_, Tony Nelson found that he needed a portable way to send a Ctrl-C-like signal. For Unix, he was using ``signal.alarm``, but was wondering if there was a way to get something similar on Windows. Martin v. Lowis pointed out GenerateConsoleCtrlEvent, but also noted that this would send the Ctrl-C to all processes. In the end, Tony decided to punt on Windows, and just stick with the Unix tests. .. _patch to make sockets and Ctrl-C play nicely: http://bugs.python.org/1519025 Contributing threads: - `Socket Timeouts patch 1519025 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067647.html>`__ - `Testing Socket Timeouts patch 1519025 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067828.html>`__ ------------------------------------------ Documenting performance of container types ------------------------------------------ Neal Becker asked about documentation the performance of the basic Python container types, e.g. that lookup in a dict is O(1) and deletion from the beginning of a list is O(N). A number of people agreed that having such information would be helpful, but there was some concern that Guido should be the one to decide what performances guarantees were made by the language, and not just the CPython implementation. The discussion trailed off before any final decisions on how to update the documentation were made. Contributing thread: - `Document performance requirements? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067609.html>`__ --------------------------- Running the uuid test suite --------------------------- Georg Brandl fixed a bug that was causing the new uuid module's test suite not to run at all. The resulting tests indicated a number of problems in determining a MAC address. Neal Norwitz patched the uuid module so that it should work at least on Linux, Tru64, Solaris, and HP-UX, and Tim Peters patched it so that test_uuid no longer thinks that the uuid module knows multiple ways of getting a well-defined MAC address (which it doesn't on Windows). Contributing threads: - `uuid test suite failing <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067744.html>`__ - `how about adding ping's uuid module to the standard lib ? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067764.html>`__ - `Another uuid problem <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067777.html>`__ - `test_uuid <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067830.html>`__ ------------------------------------ CPython and checking for NULL values ------------------------------------ Neal Norwitz took a look at some of the issues raised by the automatic analysis of Python's source code offered by Klocwork_. There was a fairly long discussion around a Py_XINCREF of a variable that was required by the documentation to be non-NULL (and thus the "X" is unnecessary). There was some suggestion of trying to check for NULL values anyway, but the rest of Python doesn't do such checks. .. _Klocwork: http://www.klocwork.com/ Contributing thread: - `remaining issues from Klocwork static analysis <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067681.html>`__ --------------------------------------------- Excluding certain constructs from Python code --------------------------------------------- Boris Borcic suggested that to make changing version of Python easier, style sheets should be introduced such that you could allow or disallow particular constructs that you liked or didn't like. People thought this was generally a very bad idea as it would essentially introduce a bunch of language variants, and coders might not be able to read each others' source code without first applying the appropriate transformation. Contributing threads: - `Python Style Sheets ? Re: User's complaints <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067432.html>`__ - `Python Style Sheets ? Re: User's complaints <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067491.html>`__ --------------------------------------------------------- Making attributes with leading single underscores private --------------------------------------------------------- David Hopwood proposed enforcing the `PEP 8`_ convention that attributes with a single underscore are private to that object. His approach revolved around allowing only the first argument of a function to access attributes starting with '_', but Armin Rigo and others felt that this was not likely to be enforceable, giving an example where subclassing allowed access to supposedly private attributes. People generally felt that without an implementation to back up the proposal, there wasn't much to discuss. .. _PEP 8: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/ Contributing thread: - `Internal namespace proposal <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067727.html>`__ ----------------------------------- Loading module attributes on demand ----------------------------------- In order to reduce the memory consumption of GTK+ applications written in Python, Johan Dahlin was looking into dynamically generating module attributes so that they would only be loaded when the application actually accessed them. He was able to produce this behavior by subclassing ModuleType, overridding __getattribute__, and then putting this object onto sys.path, but he felt like this was kind of a hackish solution. Phillip J. Eby pointed out the importing_ package and said that the __getattribute__ approach was generally okay, though it would cause problems for pydoc and inspect which don't handle subclasses of ModuleType well. Andrew Bennetts pointed out mercurial's demandload_ which allows modules to be imported on demand, but this didn't really solve Johan's problem because all attributes of the modules themselves were still imported at the same time. .. _importing: http://cheeseshop.python.org/pypi/Importing .. _demandload: http://selenic.com/repo/hg?f=cb4715847a81;file=mercurial/demandload.py Contributing thread: - `Dynamic module namspaces <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067485.html>`__ ------------------------------- Improving the Python test suite ------------------------------- Matt Fleming has put together `a wiki page`_ indicating the tests that are currently missing from Python's test suite, as well as the tests that are incomplete. He plans on working his way through the list when he gets some time, but help for any of the tests is quite welcome. .. _a wiki page: http://wiki.python.org/moin/ImprovingLibTests Contributing thread: - `Improving unit tests for the standard library <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067723.html>`__ ---------------------------------- Improving the Python documentation ---------------------------------- Georg Brandl, referring to `bug 469773`_, suggested that python gain a "Using Python" page containing the man page and how to invoke the interpreter. He also suggested that creating a list of frequently needed documentation sections that are hard to find for newbies could go a long way towards making the Python documentation more user-friendly. .. _bug 469773: http://bugs.python.org/469773 Contributing thread: - `Using Python docs <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067823.html>`__ ================ Deferred Threads ================ - `struct module and coercing floats to integers <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067798.html>`__ - `Rounding float to int directly (Re: struct module and coercing floats to integers) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067819.html>`__ ================== Previous Summaries ================== - `Support for PyGetSetDefs in pydoc <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067590.html>`__ =============== Skipped Threads =============== - `Problem with super() usage <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067480.html>`__ - `Pronouncement on SF #1520294 sought <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067483.html>`__ - `I have submitted a patch that implement IrDA socket support . <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067484.html>`__ - `User's complaints <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067501.html>`__ - `Pickling objects that return string from reduce <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067508.html>`__ - `[Python-checkins] r50708 - in python/trunk: Lib/test/test_sys.py Misc/NEWS Python/pystate.c <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067549.html>`__ - `Python sprint in NY and CA, Aug. 21-24 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067554.html>`__ - `Weekly Python Patch/Bug Summary <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067563.html>`__ - `os.utime and os.chmod failures (etc) Python 2.5b2 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067566.html>`__ - `FW: Bug? Certainly a new *behavior* from subprocess in 2.5 on Win32 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067597.html>`__ - `Behavior change in subprocess.py <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067599.html>`__ - `segfault when using PyGILState_Ensure/Release in Python2.3.4 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067605.html>`__ - `Ireland PyPy sprint 21th-27th August 2006 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067610.html>`__ - `Python 2.4, VS 2005 & Profile Guided Optmization <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067646.html>`__ - `Python sprint in Arlington July 29/30 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067667.html>`__ - `setup.py and cross-compiling <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067669.html>`__ - `2.5: uses of sys.exc_type, exc_value <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067711.html>`__ - `[Windows, buildbot] kill_python.c mystery <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067722.html>`__ - `patch for mbcs codec (again) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067724.html>`__ - `Which version of distutils to ship with Python 2.5? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067726.html>`__ - `Patch for building ctypes on more OpenBSD target platforms <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067735.html>`__ - `Release manager: pdb bugfix incompatibility <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067741.html>`__ - `patching pydoc? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067776.html>`__ - `Fwd: patching pydoc? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067788.html>`__ - `Patch Against shutil.copytree Bug <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067802.html>`__ - `httplib and bad response chunking <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067803.html>`__ - `cgi.FieldStorage DOS (sf bug #1112549) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067811.html>`__ - `Eliminating loops <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067813.html>`__ ======== Epilogue ======== This is a summary of traffic on the `python-dev mailing list`_ from July 16, 2006 through July 31, 2006. It is intended to inform the wider Python community of on-going developments on the list on a semi-monthly basis. An archive_ of previous summaries is available online. An `RSS feed`_ of the titles of the summaries is available. You can also watch comp.lang.python or comp.lang.python.announce for new summaries (or through their email gateways of python-list or python-announce, respectively, as found at http://mail.python.org). This python-dev summary is the 9th written by Steve Bethard. To contact me, please send email: - Steve Bethard (steven.bethard at gmail.com) Do *not* post to comp.lang.python if you wish to reach me. The `Python Software Foundation`_ is the non-profit organization that holds the intellectual property for Python. It also tries to advance the development and use of Python. If you find the python-dev Summary helpful please consider making a donation. You can make a donation at http://python.org/psf/donations.html . Every cent counts so even a small donation with a credit card, check, or by PayPal helps. -------------------- Commenting on Topics -------------------- To comment on anything mentioned here, just post to `comp.lang.python`_ (or email python-list(a)python.org which is a gateway to the newsgroup) with a subject line mentioning what you are discussing. All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on something. And if all of this really interests you then get involved and join `python-dev`_! ------------------------- How to Read the Summaries ------------------------- That this summary is written using reStructuredText_. Any unfamiliar punctuation is probably markup for reST_ (otherwise it is probably regular expression syntax or a typo :); you can safely ignore it. We do suggest learning reST, though; it's simple and is accepted for `PEP markup`_ and can be turned into many different formats like HTML and LaTeX. .. _python-dev: http://www.python.org/dev/ .. _SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470 .. _python-dev mailing list: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev .. _c.l.py: .. _comp.lang.python: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.python .. _PEP Markup: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0012.html .. _Docutils: http://docutils.sf.net/ .. _reST: .. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html .. _PSF: .. _Python Software Foundation: http://python.org/psf/ .. _archive: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ .. _RSS feed: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/channews.rdf

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python-dev Summary for 2006-07-01 through 2006-07-15
by steven.bethard＠gmail.com 15 Aug '06

15 Aug '06

python-dev Summary for 2006-07-01 through 2006-07-15 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ .. contents:: [The HTML version of this Summary is available at http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2006-07-01_2006-07-15] ============= Announcements ============= ------------------- Python 2.5 schedule ------------------- Python continues to make progress towards Python 2.5 final. See `PEP 356`_ for more details and the full schedule. .. _PEP 356: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0356/ Contributing threads: - `TRUNK FREEZE for 2.5b2, tomorrow Tuesday 11th, 00:00 UTC <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067189.html>`__ - `Subject: RELEASED Python 2.5 (beta 2) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067255.html>`__ - `TRUNK is UNFROZEN. <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067259.html>`__ -------------------------- ctypes in the Python trunk -------------------------- Martin v. Lowis successfully imported the ctypes history into the Python trunk, so ctypes now shares its repository with the rest of Python. Thanks everyone for your hard work! Contributing threads: - `Moving the ctypes repository to python.org <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066962.html>`__ - `Subversion outage Friday 15:00 GMT <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067101.html>`__ - `SVN write access is back <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067125.html>`__ - `Extended Subversion outage: Friday 16:40 GMT <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067127.html>`__ ========= Summaries ========= ------------------------- Rebinding non-local names ------------------------- A bug in the Python trunk that allowed augmented assignment to rebind names in outer scopes initiated a new discussion about how to allow Python code to rebind non-local names, e.g.:: def counter(n=0): def increment(i=1): n += i # change the n in counter return n return increment Guido definitely didn't like the idea of introducing a new rebinding operator, e.g. ``:=`` or ``.=``. Phillip J. Eby suggested that a dot prefix to the name could indicate rebinding, e.g.:: def counter(n=0): def increment(i=1): .n += i return .n return increment Guido felt uncomfortable with this proposal because it would mean that in referencing a value the only difference between ``.NAME`` and ``NAME`` was whether or not the name was assigned to at another place in the same function. This ambiguity could be avoided by requiring all references to names in outer scopes to be prefixed by the dot, but that seemed like too large of a change for Python. There was also some discussion of trying to reuse the global keyword, but most folks felt that ``outer`` or ``nonlocal`` was a better name:: def counter(n=0): def increment(i=1): nonlocal n n += i return n return increment Guido requested a PEP on the subject, but at the time of this summary, none was available. Contributing threads: - `2.5 and beyond <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066857.html>`__ - `Lexical scoping in Python 3k <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066862.html>`__ - `Explicit Lexical Scoping (pre-PEP?) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066978.html>`__ -------------------------------------- Python and backwards incompatibilities -------------------------------------- A `complaint by Greg Black`_ about Python introducing backward incompatibilities started a long discussion about how Python developers could stay in better touch with existing user code. Greg Black's code had relied on undocumented behavior in time.strftime() that had allowed zeros to be passed in as default values. When that behavior changed in Python 2.4, Greg's code (along with a number of other people's code) was broken. Python core didn't have any unittests for the behavior, so no tests started failing when the change was made. Glyph suggested adding a mechanism so that user projects could submit buildslaves to run their test suites when changes are made to Python. The goal here would be to identify any de facto coding standards that weren't tested for in Python's test suite. If a change to Python caused major projects like Twisted or Zope to start failing dramatically, that change should be reconsidered even if it didn't break any documented behavior. People generally thought this was a great idea, particularly since it might catch some of these changes earlier than alpha or beta releases. There was also some concern that the Python 2.5 release cycle had been sped up too much and users hadn't had enough time to report errors. However, adding more beta releases (which seemed to be the major suggestion) also adds more work for release managers and requires more schedule coordination so that all the release managers can be available. People also had the mistaken impression that the trunk of Python was not so stable, particularly because they had assumed that non-green buildbots meant an unusable Python. In general, non-green buildbots typically mean that some part of the test suite is failing, not that the interpreter could not be built. A.M. Kuchling suggested adding some of the `checkin policies discussion`_ to the release announcements to make this more obvious. .. _complaint by Greg Black: http://www.gbch.net/gjb/blog/software/discuss/python-sucks.html .. _checkin policies discussion: http://www.python.org/dev/tools/ Contributing threads: - `User's complaints <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066993.html>`__ - `changing time.strftime() to accept 0s (was: User's complaints) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067297.html>`__ - `Community buildbots (was Re: User's complaints) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067366.html>`__ - `Community buildbots <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067367.html>`__ ------------------------------ Restricted execution in Python ------------------------------ Discussion continued on Brett Cannon's PhD thesis aimed at adding restricted execution to Python. Instead of trying to cripple objects like ``file``, a number of people suggested making ``file()`` and ``open()`` return different objects in restricted mode. This would require separating out some capabilities, so that, for example, a file-like object could be returned that didn't support writing. Michael Chermside suggested implementing a new type in C that stores its data privately, and requires the user to provide access-checking functions in order to make the private data visible. That way you could implement new access restrictions from pure Python code, by simply creating appropriate instances of the new type. Ka-Ping Yee asked about protecting one piece of Python code from another, but Guido and Brett suggested that the virtual machine probably couldn't provide such barriers. Brett's current progress is available in the bcannon-sandboxing branch. Contributing threads: - `For sandboxing: alternative to crippling file() <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066858.html>`__ - `doc for new restricted execution design for Python <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066881.html>`__ - `branch for sandox work created: bcannon-sandboxing <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067046.html>`__ - `In defense of Capabilities [was: doc for new restricted execution design for Python] <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067048.html>`__ - `what can we do to hide the 'file' type? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067051.html>`__ - `Restricted execution: what's the threat model? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067072.html>`__ - `Capabilities / Restricted Execution <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067240.html>`__ - `second draft of sandboxing design doc <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067291.html>`__ --------------------------------- Getting the current thread frames --------------------------------- Tim Peters snuck in a late feature, ``sys._current_frames()`` which returns a dict mapping each thread's id to that thread's current Python frame. Some people wanted to expose ``head_mutex`` instead to avoid introducing a new function, but that may not exist, depending on the build type. Given that Zope had been trying to emulate something like this for a while, it's impossible to do correctly in an extension module because the appropriate internals are not available, and it's essential for debugging deadlocks, the feature was eventually approved and checked in. Contributing thread: - `"Missing" 2.5 feature <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067160.html>`__ -------------------- Time-out in URL Open -------------------- Facundo Batista asked about adding a timeout argument to ``urllib2.urlopen()``. People generally liked the idea, but since it would be a new feature, it would have to wait until Python 2.6. There was an `existing patch` modifying httplib, ftplib, telnetllib, poplib and smtplib in this way, but it needed updating for Python 2.6. .. _existing patch: http://bugs.python.org/723312 Contributing thread: - `Time-out in URL Open <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066965.html>`__ ------------------------------------------- zlib module build failure on Mac OSX 10.4.7 ------------------------------------------- Skip Montanaro had some trouble building the zlib module from Python trunk on Mac OSX. Turns out he had an old static libz.a on the path, and that was getting found instead of the newer dynamic library. Ronald Oussoren checked in a patch to configure that should correctly set HAVE_ZLIB_COPY even if there is an old static library sitting around. At the same time, he suggested that maybe '-Wl,-search_path_first' should be added to the default LDFLAGS on OSX so that the OSX linker doesn't look for a dylib anywhere on the path before looking for a static library. Contributing thread: - `zlib module build failure on Mac OSX 10.4.7 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066880.html>`__ -------------------------------- Command line args in Python 3000 -------------------------------- Greg Ewing suggested that ``sys.argv`` could be split into the program name (``sys.argv[0]``) and the arguments (``sys.argv[1:]``). People liked this idea, and pointed out that it would be handy when there's no real program name, e.g. when exec is used with an inode number as is possible on some Unices. This was also accompanied by a discussion about splitting sys into more coherent subsets, e.g. immutable and mutable objects. Guido asked for people to hold off on this discussion until Brett had a clearer idea what pieces would need to be split off for restricted execution. Contributing thread: - `Handling of sys.args (Re: User's complaints) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067339.html>`__ -------------------------- Import semantics in Jython -------------------------- Jython had been following the Java convention that sub-packages were imported when their parent package was imported. Guido had suggested that at least Python packages in Jython should import with the standard Python semantics. During this fortnight, Guido checked back in with the Jython folks to see if they'd made their mind up about this. Frank Wierzbicki, the new maintainer for Jython, said that he won't have a chance to fix this until after Jython 2.3 is out, but both he and Samuele Pedroni suggested that it was a change that needed to be made. Contributing thread: - `Import semantics <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066999.html>`__ ----------------------------------------------- ImportWarnings for directories without __init__ ----------------------------------------------- After the substantial discussion last fortnight on whether or not warnings should be issued if a directory was not imported because it was missing an __init__.py file, Anthony Baxter suggested that the best course of action was to suppress the ImportWarning by default, and allow users to unsuppress it in their sitecustomize.py file. Contributing threads: - `ImportWarning flood <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066879.html>`__ - `ImportWarning decision <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067058.html>`__ ----------------------------------- Putting doctest code into footnotes ----------------------------------- Benji York posted a `patch for doctest`_ that teaches doctest about ReST-style footnotes so that you can write documentation like:: After initializing the system [#init]_ it is possible to retrieve status information: >>> system.status() 'good to go' [snip some of the doctest] .. [#init] Initialize the system: >>> system = System() >>> system.init() People liked the idea, and Benji promised to update the patch for the 2.5 version of doctest. .. _patch for doctest: http://tinyurl.com/nekam Contributing thread: - `Doctest and Footnotes <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067223.html>`__ ------------------------------- Using urllib.quote with unicode ------------------------------- Stefan Rank pointed out that ``urllib.quote()`` fails with a strange KeyError on unicode stings. He suggested either raising a TypeError or automatically encoding to UTF-8 as suggested in http://www.w3.org/International/O-URL-code.html. John J Lee pointed questioned whether this was generally accepted as the Right Thing, given `RFC 2617`_, `RFC 2616`_ and the recent discussion about a `uriparse module`_. In the end, people seemed to agree that the safest thing would be to raise an exception. .. _RFC 2617: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2617.txt .. _RFC 2616: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2616.txt .. _uriparse module: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/2006-06-01_2006-06-15/#rfc-3986-uniform-r… Contributing thread: - `urllib.quote and unicode bug resuscitation attempt <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067248.html>`__ ----------------------------------- Borderline cases for ints and longs ----------------------------------- Neil Schemenauer asked if -2147483648 (``-sys.maxint - 1``)should be an int or a long. In Python 2.4 it was an int, but in the trunk, it was a long. Tim Peters explained that -2147483648 is not actually an int literal -- it is a long literal with a unary minus. Nonetheless, practicality beat purity, and Neal Norwitz and Neil Schemenauer put together a fix to make it an int again. You can still defeat the patch with something like ``eval('-(%s)' % str(-sys.maxint - 1)[1:])``, but no one seemed too worried about that. Contributing thread: - `Unary minus bug <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067176.html>`__ --------------------------------- Adding list.get() and tuple.get() --------------------------------- Russell E. Owen asked about adding a ``.get()`` method to lists and tuples that would return a default value if the index was out of range. Most people seemed to think that wanting such a method was a bad code smell and Raymond Hettinger suggested that it could be replaced in Python 2.5 with a simple ``seq[i] if len(seq) > i else default``. Contributing thread: - `get for lists and tuples? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067263.html>`__ ----------------------------- Adding a __dir__ magic method ----------------------------- Tomer Filiba suggested adding a ``__dir__()`` magic method that would be called by ``dir()``. The default one on ``object`` would do the normal search through ``__dict__`` and the superclasses, and subclasses of ``object`` could override this to add attributes that are harder to find, e.g. pseudo-attributed implemented through ``__getattr__``. Everyone liked the idea and Guido said it could be added for Python 2.6. Contributing thread: - `introducing __dir__? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067095.html>`__ ----------------------------------------------------- pydoc support for attributes defined with PyGetSetDef ----------------------------------------------------- Barry Warsaw pointed out that pydoc couldn't handle attributes defined with PyGetSetDef because there was no corresponding type in the types module. He found a similar problem with "member_descriptor" types like ``datetime.timedelta.days``. The latter was particularly a problem because the datetime module was not importable in the types module because the types module is imported before the platform-specific extension module directory is on sys.path. He suggested a `fix for pydoc`_ that would introduce a _types module coded in C that could make the appropriate types available. .. _fix for pydoc: http://bugs.python.org/1520294 Contributing thread: - `Support for PyGetSetDefs in pydoc <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067219.html>`__ ================ Deferred Threads ================ - `Python Style Sheets ? Re: User's complaints <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067432.html>`__ ================== Previous Summaries ================== - `Cleanup of test harness for Python <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066898.html>`__ - `PEP 328 and PEP 338, redux <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066904.html>`__ - `Empty Subscript PEP on Wiki - keep or toss? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066922.html>`__ - `More Switch: Explicit freezing <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066925.html>`__ - `Proposal to eliminate PySet_Fini <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066952.html>`__ - `Switch and static, redux <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067117.html>`__ =============== Skipped Threads =============== - `traceback regression <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066859.html>`__ - `sys.settrace() in Python 2.3 vs. 2.4 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066899.html>`__ - `Bug in stringobject? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066901.html>`__ - `weakattr <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066905.html>`__ - `how long to wait for expat to incorporate a fix to prevent a crasher? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066932.html>`__ - `LOAD_CONST POP_TOP <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066937.html>`__ - `Another 2.5 bug candidate? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066940.html>`__ - `DRAFT: python-dev summary for 2006-06-01 to 2006-06-15 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066948.html>`__ - `Proposed beta 2 changes (Q for Anthony/Neal) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066982.html>`__ - `2.5b1 Windows install <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/066994.html>`__ - `Patch for commands.py to provide callback <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067019.html>`__ - `import screwiness <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067062.html>`__ - `zipfile.ZipFile('foo.zip', 'a'): file not found -> create? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067079.html>`__ - `Musings on concurrency and scoping ("replacing" Javascript) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067103.html>`__ - `About a month until PSF call for test trackers closes! <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067104.html>`__ - `test_ctypes failure on Mac OS X/PowerPC 10.3.9 (Panther) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067126.html>`__ - `[slighly OT] Native speakers and hurting brains <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067132.html>`__ - `exception too expensive? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067157.html>`__ - `Weekly Python Patch/Bug Summary <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067175.html>`__ - `xml issue in 2.5 <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067187.html>`__ - `Fix for Lib/test/leakers/test_gestalt.py <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067195.html>`__ - `Discussion on Lib/test/crashers/ <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067197.html>`__ - `Add new PyErr_WarnEx() to 2.5? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067198.html>`__ - `Klocwork analysis of source if we want it <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067210.html>`__ - `easy_install <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067232.html>`__ - `subprocess.CalledProcessError.errno (#1223937) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067234.html>`__ - `Minor: Unix icons for 2.5? <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067260.html>`__ - `PEP 356: python.org/sf/1515343 resolution <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067284.html>`__ - `Autoloading? (Making Queue.Queue easier to use) <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067292.html>`__ - `Long options support <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067309.html>`__ - `Behavior change in subprocess.py <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067311.html>`__ - `Proposal: Add Sudoku Solver To The "this" Module <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067342.html>`__ - `The buffer() function <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067360.html>`__ - `Partial support for dlmodule.c in 64-bits OSes <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067378.html>`__ - `IDLE - firewall warning <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-July/067420.html>`__ ======== Epilogue ======== This is a summary of traffic on the `python-dev mailing list`_ from July 01, 2006 through July 15, 2006. It is intended to inform the wider Python community of on-going developments on the list on a semi-monthly basis. An archive_ of previous summaries is available online. An `RSS feed`_ of the titles of the summaries is available. You can also watch comp.lang.python or comp.lang.python.announce for new summaries (or through their email gateways of python-list or python-announce, respectively, as found at http://mail.python.org). This python-dev summary is the 8th written by Steve Bethard. To contact me, please send email: - Steve Bethard (steven.bethard at gmail.com) Do *not* post to comp.lang.python if you wish to reach me. The `Python Software Foundation`_ is the non-profit organization that holds the intellectual property for Python. It also tries to advance the development and use of Python. If you find the python-dev Summary helpful please consider making a donation. You can make a donation at http://python.org/psf/donations.html . Every cent counts so even a small donation with a credit card, check, or by PayPal helps. -------------------- Commenting on Topics -------------------- To comment on anything mentioned here, just post to `comp.lang.python`_ (or email python-list(a)python.org which is a gateway to the newsgroup) with a subject line mentioning what you are discussing. All python-dev members are interested in seeing ideas discussed by the community, so don't hesitate to take a stance on something. And if all of this really interests you then get involved and join `python-dev`_! ------------------------- How to Read the Summaries ------------------------- That this summary is written using reStructuredText_. Any unfamiliar punctuation is probably markup for reST_ (otherwise it is probably regular expression syntax or a typo :); you can safely ignore it. We do suggest learning reST, though; it's simple and is accepted for `PEP markup`_ and can be turned into many different formats like HTML and LaTeX. .. _python-dev: http://www.python.org/dev/ .. _SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=5470 .. _python-dev mailing list: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-dev .. _c.l.py: .. _comp.lang.python: http://groups.google.com/groups?q=comp.lang.python .. _PEP Markup: http://www.python.org/peps/pep-0012.html .. _Docutils: http://docutils.sf.net/ .. _reST: .. _reStructuredText: http://docutils.sf.net/rst.html .. _PSF: .. _Python Software Foundation: http://python.org/psf/ .. _archive: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/ .. _RSS feed: http://www.python.org/dev/summary/channews.rdf

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ANN: Crunchy version 0.7 is here!
by johannes.wollard＠gmail.com 15 Aug '06

15 Aug '06

Version 0.7 of Crunchy has been released. It is available on Sourceforge (http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=169458) Crunchy, the Interactive Python Tutorial Maker, is an application that transforms an ordinary html-based Python tutorial into an interactive session within a web browser. Currently, only Firefox is supported. Crunchy is developed and tested on Windows XP and Ubuntu Dapper Drake, but should work on any suitable windows or UNIX system. Apart from Firefox and Python, Crunchy's only dependency is Elementtree, available from http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm. This still applies if you are using Python 2.5 because we use parts of Elementtree that are not included in the Python 2.5 standard library. 0. Name change To prevent confusion with an existing program named CrunchyFrog, "Crunchy Frog" has been renamed as "Crunchy", short for "Crunchy, the Interactive Python Tutorial Maker". 1. *Security fix* The previous versions of Crunchy allowed tutorials containing arbitrary (and hidden) javascript code to be loaded within a browser window. The new version removes any existing javascript code prior to processing for display within a browser. Feel free to try and break this - and please report any findings back to us. 2. New functionality. * It is possible to run external programs from within the browser; sample demos include GUI programs with 1. Tkinter, 2. pyGtk, 3. wxPython, 4. Pygame * Automatic syntax colouring of (static) Python code, including (as an option) line numbering. * New plotting canvas with simple to use api to draw mathematical functions * Drawing & plotting canvas can be set to arbitrary size. * Multiple canvas can now appear on same page. * New addition and simplification to the sound api. * Simplification of error message (tracebacks) more suitable for beginners. 3. New visual design: * Integrated menu which can be styled through custom css * Three sample css styles now included (selectable via the browser menu) 4. New content: * First draft sound tutorial exploring concepts of frequency, beats, harmonics (Fourier series), etc. * New addition to the basic "Crunchy user" tutorial * Additions to all reference documentation (sound & graphics api, vlam options, etc.) Please send bug reports and feedback to André Roberge (andre.roberge(a)gmail.com) and/or Johannes Woolard (johannes.wollard(a)gmail.com).

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RELEASED: scgi 1.11
by Neil Schemenauer 15 Aug '06

15 Aug '06

The SCGI protocol is a replacement for the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) protocol. It is similar to FastCGI but is designed to be easier to implement. The scgi package includes implementions of the SCGI protocol for Python, Apache 1 and Apache 2. The highlights of this release: * Improve portability of the passfd module (solves at least one bug on AMD64 machines). * Fix a mod_scgi bug that caused a segfault (due to a NULL pointer dereference) with certain configurations. Thanks to Thomas Yandell for helping track down the bug. * Don't send duplicated headers for SCRIPT_NAME and HTTPS. * Allow SCGIServer to use an open socket if provided by the calling procedure. The existing serve() method remains the same. The file can be downloaded from: http://quixote.python.ca/releases/scgi-1.11.tar.gz The source code is also available as a bazaar-ng repository: http://quixote.python.ca/scgi.dev/ Note that this release represents an opening up of the development process. I hope that the switch to bazaar-ng will make it easier for users in the community to contribute to the development of the package. Neil

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ANN: byteplay - a bytecode assembler/disassembler
by spam.noam＠gmail.com 14 Aug '06

14 Aug '06

Hello, I would like to present a module that I have wrote, called byteplay. It's a Python bytecode assembler/disassembler, which means that you can take Python code object, disassemble them into equivalent objects which are easy to play with, play with them, and then assemble a new, modified, code object. I think it's pretty useful if you like to learn more about Python's bytecode - playing with things and seeing what happens is a nice way to learn, I think. Here's a quick example. We can define this stupid function: >>> def f(a, b): ... print (a, b) >>> f(3, 5) (3, 5) We can convert it to an equivalent object, and see how it stores the byte code: >>> from byteplay import * >>> c = Code.from_code(f.func_code) >>> from pprint import pprint; pprint(c.code) [(SetLineno, 2), (LOAD_FAST, 'a'), (LOAD_FAST, 'b'), (BUILD_TUPLE, 2), (PRINT_ITEM, None), (PRINT_NEWLINE, None), (LOAD_CONST, None), (RETURN_VALUE, None)] We can change the bytecode easily, and see what happens. Let's insert a ROT_TWO opcode, that will swap the two arguments: >>> c.code[3:3] = [(ROT_TWO, None)] >>> f.func_code = c.to_code() >>> f(3, 5) (5, 3) You can download byteplay from http://byteplay.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/byteplay.py and you can read (and edit) the documentation at http://wiki.python.org/moin/ByteplayDoc . I will be happy to hear if you find it useful, or if you have any comments or ideas. Have a good day, Noam Raphael

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LDTP 0.5.0 released !!!
by A Nagappan 14 Aug '06

14 Aug '06

Issue VIII - 10 August 2006 We are proud to announce the release of LDTP 0.5.0. This release features number of important breakthroughs in the history of LDTP as well as in the field of Test Automation. This release note covers a brief introduction on LDTP followed by the list of new features and major bug fixes which makes this new version of LDTP the best of the breed. Useful references have been included at the end of this article for those who wish to hack / use LDTP. LDTP developers had the privilege of participating in the Google Summer of Code contest. Special thanks to the mentors of LDTP in the event Varadhan and Emily Chen. We also thank Prashanth Mohan ('Casanova') for his wonderful contributions acting as student developer for LDTP as part of this event. LDTP Planet has been set up by Prashanth Mohan ('Casanova') for sharing information more effectively across the community. You can have access to the planet through the following link http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/planet/ About LDTP ========== Linux Desktop Testing Project is aimed at producing high quality test automation framework and cutting-edge tools that can be used to test Linux Desktop and improve it. It uses the Accessibility libraries to poke through the application's user interface. The framework also has tools to record test-cases based on user events in the interface of the application which is under testing. We strive to help in building a quality desktop. Whats new in this release... ============================ + Recording using LDTP This new version of LDTP features a recorder tool which would help in generating automation scripts automatically by recording user events. This would greatly reduce the time required for creating and maintaining automation scripts. Thanks to Venkateswaran ('whacko'), Harishankaran ('sp2hari') and Theyagarajan ('Taggy') for making this happen. For more information on this please refer to http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/RecordHOWTO + Integration with Tinderbox - LDTP has been integrated with the GNOME jhbuild. Using this feature one can execute test scripts automatically at the end of successful completion of package building using jhbuild. This was done as part of Google SoC. Thanks to Prashanth Mohan ('Casanova') again for his wonderful contribution. Please refer to the following links for more information. * http://prashblog.be/2006/07/27/ldtp-integrated-into-jhbuild/ * http://www.0d.be/2006/07/25/integrating-ldtp-into-jhbuild/ * http://tieguy.org/blog/2006/07/26/little-bits-of-awesomeness/ + Automation scripts * More than 70 new scripts for Gedit has been developed and is available for download with this release. Kudos to Lakshmi Narasimhan ('narasim_7') and 'addict3d' for their excellent work. You can download them from http://people.freedesktop.org/~prashmohan/gedit/ * New automation scripts for Evolution are being developed by Prashanth Mohan ('Casanova') as part of his SoC contribution. These scripts can be downloaded from http://people.freedesktop.org/~prashmohan/evolution/ + Documentation updates LDTP documentation section in the LDTP web site has been updated with the latest list of automation APIs. Thanks to our maintainer Nagappan ('nags') for his contribution. + Bug fixes This version includes loads of bug fixes to address important issues like memory leak, API functionality etc., For a detailed list please refer to release notes section of our project site hosted in http://ldtp.freedesktop.org. Thanks to all the developers for their contribution. Whats in Store... ================= + We are very pleased with the ongoing work on porting LDTP to ARM platform by people from Palm Source, China. One of their latest contribution has led to an Object Oriented LDTP approach. It still under development but you can have a taste of this new recipe by following this link http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Object_2oriented_20LDTP + With Google SoC in full steam, we are awaiting more breakthroughs by our LDTP team pabe downloaded from the following location http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Downloads References ========== For detailed information on LDTP framework and latest updates visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.org For information on various APIs in LDTP including those added for this release can be got from http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/user-doc/index.html To subscribe to LDTP mailing lists, visit http://ldtp.freedesktop.org/wiki/Mailing_20list IRC Channel - #ldtp on irc.freenode.net For suggestions to improve this newsletter, please write to jpremkumar(a)novell.com Nagappan A <anagappan(a)novell.com> Linux Desktop Testing Project - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org http://nagappanal.blogspot.com Novell, Inc. SUSE® Linux Enterprise 10 Your Linux is ready™ http://www.novell.com/linux

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Toronto Area Python User's group meeting this Tuesday, 6:30pm, Linux Caffe
by Mike C. Fletcher 14 Aug '06

14 Aug '06

As discussed at the last meeting, we're moving the night for the PyGTA meetings to avoid the common conflicts with the DemoCamp nights. We'll be moving to the Third Tuesday of the month, with general gathering an socialisation starting at 6:30 and the "formal" part of the evening starting at 7pm. We go out for drinks in the neighborhood after the "formal" part of the meeting, so drop in even if you're not able to make it for 7pm on the dot. Sorry for the late notice on the date-change, hope to see you there, Mike -- ________________________________________________ Mike C. Fletcher Designer, VR Plumber, Coder http://www.vrplumber.com http://blog.vrplumber.com

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Early Bird Registration closes Tuesday - Leipzig Python Workshop
by Mike Müller 13 Aug '06

13 Aug '06

Early bird workshop registration closes Tuesday (August 15th). Late registration will be available until the workshop starts, but at a greater cost. === Workshop "Python im deutschsprachigen Raum" === Der letzte Termin für den Frühbucherrabatt ist Dienstag, der 15. August. Danach sind Anmeldungen noch bis zum Beginn des Workshops möglich, die Anmeldegebühr ist aber etwas höher. Anmeldungen unter: http://www.python-academy.de/workshop/anmeldung.html === Workshop-Details === Am 8. September 2006 findet in Leipzig der Workshop "Python im deutschsprachigen Raum" statt. Der Workshop ist als Ergänzung zu den internationalen und europäischen Python-Zusammenkünften gedacht. Die Themenpalette der Vorträge ist sehr weit gefasst und soll alles einschließen, was mit Python im deutschsprachigen Raum zu tun hat. Eine ausführliche Beschreibung der Ziele des Workshops, der Workshop-Themen sowie Details zu Organisation und Anmeldung sind unter http://www.python-academy.de/workshop nachzulesen. === Wichtige Termine === 15.08.2006 Letzter Termin für Frühbucherrabatt 08.09.2006 Workshop 15.09.2006 Letzter Termin für die Einreichung der publikationsfähigen Beiträge Dezember 2006 Veröffentlichung des Tagungsbandes === Bitte weitersagen === Der Workshop soll auch Leute ansprechen, die bisher nicht mit Python arbeiten. Wer mithelfen möchte den Workshop bekannt zu machen, kann einen Link auf http://www.python-academy.de/workshop setzen. Auch außerhalb des Internets kann der Workshop durch den Flyer http://www.python-academy.de/download/programm.pdf bekannt gemacht werden. Einfach doppelseitig ausdrucken oder kopieren und ein paar Exemplare am Schwarzen Brett von Universitäten, Firmen, Organisationen usw. aushängen. Wir freuen uns auf eine rege Teilnahme, Mike Müller Stefan Schwarzer

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Program - Leipzig Python Workshop
by Mike Müller 12 Aug '06

12 Aug '06

We are happy to announce that the program for the workshop is now available. === Workshop "Python im deutschsprachigen Raum" === Bis zum Workshop am 8. September sind es weniger als vier Wochen. Das Programm steht nun fest. Unter: http://www.python-academy.de/workshop/programm.html ist die aktuelle Version verfügbar. Eine PDF-Version steht hier: http://www.python-academy.de/workshop/download.html zum herunterladen bereit. === Workshop-Programm === Stand: 12. August 2006 Freitag, 8. September 2006 9:00 9:15 Uhr Mike Müller, Python Academy, Leipzig Klaus Peter Fähnrich, Universität Leipzig Einführung 9:15 10:30 Uhr Mike Müller, Python Academy, Leipzig Tutorial: Das ist Python 10:30 11:00 Uhr Pause mit Verpflegung 11:00 11:40 Uhr Gregor Lingl, Bundesrealgymnasium 16, Wien xturtle ein Grafikmodul für den Einstieg ins Programmieren 11:40 12:20 Uhr Michael Goral, DevTrans, Steinmaur, Schweiz Die Pythondenkweise als wirkungsvoller Hebel für bessere Ergebnisse in der Anwendungsentwicklung 12:20 13:20 Uhr Mittagspause (Essen individuell) 13:20 14:20 Uhr Martin von Löwis, Hasso-Plattner-Institut Potsdam Keynote: Python-Dev: Wie Python entwickelt wird 14:20 15:20 Uhr Stefan Behnel, lxml Projekt Tutorial: XML mit Python - Eine Einführung 15:20 15:40 Uhr Pause mit Verpflegung 15:40 16:20 Uhr Rainer Fischbach, ECS Engineering, Consulting & Solutions GmbH, Neumarkt Python als Unterstützung im Produktdaten-Management 16:20 17:00 Uhr Stefan Schwarzer, SSchwarzer.com, Leipzig Python-Einsatz beim Informationsdienst Wissenschaft e. V. 17:00 18:00 Uhr Moderation: Mike Müller und Stefan Schwarzer Diskussion: Die Zukunft von Python - eine Sprache für jedermann? 18:30 Uhr Stadtführung (Treffpunkt Springbrunnen vor dem Gewandhaus) 20:30 Uhr Abendveranstaltung in einem Leipziger Restaurant (nicht im Teilnehmerbeitrag enthalten) === Workshop-Details === Am 8. September 2006 findet in Leipzig der Workshop "Python im deutschsprachigen Raum" statt. Der Workshop ist als Ergänzung zu den internationalen und europäischen Python-Zusammenkünften gedacht. Die Themenpalette der Vorträge ist sehr weit gefasst und soll alles einschließen, was mit Python im deutschsprachigen Raum zu tun hat. Eine ausführliche Beschreibung der Ziele des Workshops, der Workshop-Themen sowie Details zu Organisation und Anmeldung sind unter http://www.python-academy.de/workshop nachzulesen. === Wichtige Termine === 15.08.2006 Letzter Termin für Frühbucherrabatt 08.09.2006 Workshop 15.09.2006 Letzter Termin für die Einreichung der publikationsfähigen Beiträge Dezember 2006 Veröffentlichung des Tagungsbandes === Bitte weitersagen === Der Workshop soll auch Leute ansprechen, die bisher nicht mit Python arbeiten. Wer mithelfen möchte den Workshop bekannt zu machen, kann einen Link auf http://www.python-academy.de/workshop setzen. Auch außerhalb des Internets kann der Workshop durch den Flyer http://www.python-academy.de/download/programm.pdf bekannt gemacht werden. Einfach doppelseitig ausdrucken oder kopieren und ein paar Exemplare am Schwarzen Brett von Universitäten, Firmen, Organisationen usw. aushängen. Wir freuen uns auf eine rege Teilnahme, Mike Müller Stefan Schwarzer

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ChiPy Chicago Python User Group Meeting Tomorrow
by bray＠sent.com 09 Aug '06

09 Aug '06

This will be our best meeting yet! ChiPy's Monthly meeting this Thurs. August 10, 2006. 7pm. (except for folks who want to help setup at 6:30 and get first dibs on pizza-compliments of Uncle Roy (Singham)) Topics ------ * Adrian Holovaty's new Django Add-on for quickly publishing websites. * John Melesky on AppScript * Sir Galahad on Python 2.5 (beta 3) in a nutshell * BarCamp review and hangovers * Lighting talks: MD5, ... Location -------- ThoughtWorks' Chicago office 651 West Washington Blvd., 6th floor Chicago, IL 60661 Location description: "6 story, brick building on the Southwest corner of Washington Blvd. and Desplaines St." "Right next to the 90/94 freeway" "Across the street from the Social Security building" * Map <http://tinyurl.com/mgcxo> * "Official" info <http://www.thoughtworks.com/chicagoInfo.html> Call jason at 3 1 2 - 3 7 3 . 8 5 5 6 if you get locked out or lost. (The external doors should be open, but be sure to enter on the "east" side (Desplaines) Street (meter) parking is available in the area. Shoot for "free" (no meters) parking on the South side of the building if you're lucky. And be sure to feed those meters; Brother Leader Daley collects tons of cash from meter fines in this area. Garage parking is also available across the street (technically across the interstate) at the very tall SkyBridge condo building. 1) The closest "L" stop is Clinton on the "Green Line". (About an 8 minute walk from TW.) 2) The closest Metra station is the Ogilvie Transportation Center (in the Citibank Building) 2 blocks east of TW. (a 4 minute walk) 3) The closest water taxi stop is at Madison Street Bridge at 2 North Riverside Plaza. (<http://www.wendellariverbus.com/rbdock.htm>) ;-) 4) I can't find good info on the nearest helipad. Sorry, Mr. Trump. 5) Besides garage parking at SkyBridge across the freeway and meter parking around the building, there is additional garage parking at the Presidential Towers at Jefferson & Madison. There are 2 non-garage parking lots adjacent to our building. (I don't know the lots' "after 5pm" parking rules, though). Theme: If you're addicted to oil, there are lots of parking options within a short walk. About ChiPy ----------- ChiPy is a group of Chicago Python Programmers, l33t, and n00bs. Meetings are held monthly at various locations around Chicago. Also, ChiPy is a proud sponsor of many Open Source and Educational efforts in Chicago. Stay tuned to the mailing list for more info. ChiPy website: <http://chipy.org> ChiPy Mailing List: <http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/chicago> Python website: <http://python.org> ---- Forward this on.

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