Hi all!
Today (2016-12-16) has long been our planned release date for 3.6.0 final. So far most of the feedback from users testing the preview versions of 3.6.0 has been very positive. We made it to the next-to-final milestone, the 3.6.0rc1 release candidate, 10 days ago with hopes of going directly to the final release. Alas, in the last few days at least one outstanding issue that we had hoped would not be a real-world problem has proven to be a showstopper during third-party package testing and I have been persuaded that we do need to fix it before 3.6.0 final. I take responsibility and apologize for not ensuring it was resolved earlier in the release cycle; I'll try to do better next time. Therefore, we are going to produce a second release candidate. Besides the showstopper fix (#28147), I've cherrypicked a few requested build fixes and, as promised, some last-minute documentation updates and additions. I'm also expecting to cherrypick at least one more asynchio fix before tagging and manufacturing 3.6.0rc2 sometime later today (i.e. within the next 24 hours). Assuming that is accomplished, we will be looking for quick feedback to ensure that we have addressed the problems and have not introduced any new ones. Then, assuming all goes well and no new showstoppers are found, we plan to release 3.6.0 final on Friday 2016-12-23, a week from now.
Also note that there is no change in the status of the cpython repo branches. Continue to push appropriate changes to the 3.6 branch for the 3.6.1 maintenance release and to the default branch for the next feature release, 3.7.0. Should you run into a potential showstopper problem for 3.6.0, please make sure there is an open issue for it on the bug tracker marked as "release blocker", work to getting a fix pushed to the 3.6 branch for 3.6.1, and contact me ASAP to discuss potential cherrypicking. Please do the same for any necessary important documentation fixes for 3.6.0 final. As before, my goal will be to have no new changes after the release candidate.
Thank you all again for your great efforts and co-operation throughout the 3.6 development cycle! We are oh-so-close to getting your work officially out there.
--Ned
P.S. Happy Beethoven's Birthday
FYI: Here is a list of the post 3.6.0rc1 changesets that have been cherrypicked so far for 3.6.0rc2. There will likely be at least one more. (Note, the description and files list below for some changesets may be truncated.)
user: Yury Selivanov yury@magic.io date: Wed Dec 07 16:19:56 2016 -0800 files: Doc/whatsnew/3.6.rst description: Issue #28635: Drop the note that whatsnew is incomplete
user: Ned Deily nad@python.org date: Wed Dec 07 23:37:12 2016 -0500 files: Doc/tools/templates/indexsidebar.html description: Issue #28900: Update documentation sidebar for 3.6.0rc.
user: Benjamin Peterson benjamin@python.org date: Wed Dec 07 23:54:28 2016 -0800 files: Include/pyport.h description: guard HAVE_LONG_LONG definition to prevent redefinition (#28898) [prevent gdb build errors with 3.6.0]
user: Steve Dower steve.dower@microsoft.com date: Wed Dec 07 13:02:27 2016 -0800 files: Doc/library/importlib.rst Doc/using/windows.rst Doc/whatsnew/3.6.rst Misc/NEW description: Issue #28896: Deprecate WindowsRegistryFinder
user: Steve Dower steve.dower@microsoft.com date: Sun Dec 11 14:48:32 2016 -0800 files: Tools/msi/distutils.command.__init__.py Tools/msi/distutils.command.bdist_win description: Issue #28783: Replaces bdist_wininst in nuget packages with stub
user: Yury Selivanov yury@magic.io date: Mon Dec 12 16:44:58 2016 -0500 files: Doc/library/asyncio-protocol.rst Doc/whatsnew/3.6.rst description: Issue #28089: Document TCP_NODELAY in asyncio
user: Victor Stinner victor.stinner@gmail.com date: Thu Dec 15 16:20:53 2016 +0100 files: Doc/whatsnew/3.6.rst description: Issue #28979: Fix What's New in Python 3.6, dict
user: Victor Stinner victor.stinner@gmail.com date: Thu Dec 15 17:21:23 2016 +0100 files: Lib/test/test_dict.py Misc/NEWS Modules/_testcapimodule.c Objects/dictobject. description: Issue #28147: Fix a memory leak in split-table dictionaries: setattr() must not convert combined table into split table. Patch written by INADA Naoki.
user: Yury Selivanov yury@magic.io date: Thu Dec 15 17:36:05 2016 -0500 files: Doc/glossary.rst Doc/library/asyncio-eventloop.rst Doc/library/inspect.rst [...] description: Issue #28091: Document PEP 525 & PEP 530.
user: Yury Selivanov yury@magic.io date: Thu Dec 15 17:56:43 2016 -0500 files: Doc/whatsnew/3.6.rst description: Issue #28635: asyncio-related fixes and additions. [docs only]
user: Yury Selivanov yury@magic.io date: Thu Dec 15 18:58:19 2016 -0500 files: Doc/library/asyncio.rst description: docs: asyncio is no longer provisional
user: Ned Deily nad@python.org date: Thu Dec 15 23:20:48 2016 -0500 files: Misc/NEWS description: Issue #28898: add Misc/NEWS entry
-- Ned Deily nad@python.org -- []