On time, and with a minimum of fuss, we've released Python 2.1b2. Thanks again to the many developers who contributed! Check it out on the Python website: http://www.python.org/2.1/ or on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5470&release_id=28334 As it behooves a second beta release, there's no really big news since 2.1b1 was released on March 2: - Bugs fixed and documentation added. There's now an appendix of the Reference Manual documenting nested scopes: http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/ref/futures.html - When nested scopes are enabled by "from __future__ import nested_scopes", this also applies to exec, eval() and execfile(), and into the interactive interpreter (when using -i). - Assignment to the internal global variable __debug__ is now illegal. - unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT, inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library. See the PyUnit webpage for documentation: http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/ Andrew Kuchling has written (and is continuously updating) an extensive overview: What's New in Python 2.1: http://www.amk.ca/python/2.1/ See also the Release notes posted on SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=28334 We are planning to make the final release of Python 2.1 on April 13; we may release a release candidate a week earlier. We're also planning a bugfix release for Python 2.0, dubbed 2.0.1; we don't have a release schedule for this yet. We could use a volunteer to act as the bug release manager! --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)