On behalf of the Python development team and the Python community, I'm happy to announce the release of Python 2.4.4 (release candidate 1). Python 2.4.4 is a bug-fix release. While Python 2.5 is the latest version of Python, we're making this release for people who are still running Python 2.4. See the release notes at the website (also available as Misc/NEWS in the source distribution) for details of the more than 80 bugs squished in this release, including a number found by the Coverity and Klocwork static analysis tools. We'd like to offer our thanks to both these companies for making this available for open source projects. * Python 2.4.4 contains a fix for PSF-2006-001, a buffer overrun * * in repr() of unicode strings in wide unicode (UCS-4) builds. * * See http://www.python.org/news/security/PSF-2006-001/ for more. * Assuming no major problems crop up, a final release of Python 2.4.4 will follow in about a week's time. This will be the last planned release in the Python 2.4 series - future maintenance releases will be in the 2.5 line. For more information on Python 2.4.4, including download links for various platforms, release notes, and known issues, please see: http://www.python.org/2.4.4/ Highlights of this new release include: - Bug fixes. According to the release notes, at least 80 have been fixed. - A fix for PSF-2006-001, a bug in repr() for unicode strings on UCS-4 (wide unicode) builds. Highlights of the previous major Python release (2.4) are available from the Python 2.4 page, at http://www.python.org/2.4/highlights.html Enjoy this release, Anthony Anthony Baxter anthony@python.org Python Release Manager (on behalf of the entire python-dev team)