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On behalf of the Python development team, I'm happy to announce the fourth and (this time really) final alpha preview release of Python 3.2.

Python 3.2 is a continuation of the efforts to improve and stabilize the Python 3.x line. Since the final release of Python 2.7, the 2.x line will only receive bugfixes, and new features are developed for 3.x only.

Since PEP 3003, the Moratorium on Language Changes, is in effect, there are no changes in Python's syntax and built-in types in Python 3.2. Development efforts concentrated on the standard library and support for porting code to Python 3. Highlights are:

• numerous improvements to the unittest module
• PEP 3147, support for .pyc repository directories
• PEP 3149, support for version tagged dynamic libraries
• an overhauled GIL implementation that reduces contention
• many consistency and behavior fixes for numeric operations
• countless fixes regarding string/unicode issues; among them full support for a bytes environment (filenames, environment variables)
• a sysconfig module to access configuration information
• a pure-Python implementation of the datetime module
• additions to the shutil module, among them archive file support
• improvements to pdb, the Python debugger

For an extensive list of changes in 3.2, see Misc/NEWS in the Python distribution.

To download Python 3.2 visit:

 http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.2/

3.2 documentation can be found at:

 http://docs.python.org/3.2/

Please consider trying Python 3.2 with your code and reporting any bugs you may notice to:

 http://bugs.python.org/

Enjoy!

Georg Brandl, Release Manager georg at python.org (on behalf of the entire python-dev team and 3.2's contributors)