On behalf of the Python development team, I'm quite pleased to announce the third beta release of Python 3.4.

This is a preview release, and its use is not recommended for production settings.

Python 3.4 includes a range of improvements of the 3.x series, including hundreds of small improvements and bug fixes. Major new features and changes in the 3.4 release series include:

• PEP 428, a "pathlib" module providing object-oriented filesystem paths
• PEP 435, a standardized "enum" module
• PEP 436, a build enhancement that will help generate introspection information for builtins
• PEP 442, improved semantics for object finalization
• PEP 443, adding single-dispatch generic functions to the standard library
• PEP 445, a new C API for implementing custom memory allocators
• PEP 446, changing file descriptors to not be inherited by default in subprocesses
• PEP 450, a new "statistics" module
• PEP 451, standardizing module metadata for Python's module import system
• PEP 453, a bundled installer for the *pip* package manager
• PEP 454, a new "tracemalloc" module for tracing Python memory allocations
• PEP 456, a new hash algorithm for Python strings and binary data
• PEP 3154, a new and improved protocol for pickled objects
• PEP 3156, a new "asyncio" module, a new framework for asynchronous I/O

Python 3.4 is now in "feature freeze", meaning that no new features will be added. The final release is projected for mid-March 2014.

To download Python 3.4.0b3 visit:

 http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.4.0/

Please consider trying Python 3.4.0b3 with your code and reporting any new issues you notice to:

  http://bugs.python.org/

Enjoy!

-- Larry Hastings, Release Manager larry at hastings.org (on behalf of the entire python-dev team and 3.4's contributors)