Mailman 3 October 2000 - Python-Dev

This Project Has Released Files
by Martin v. Loewis 21 Oct '00

21 Oct '00

> In the interest of making the distribution as widely available as > possible, I've placed files on SourceForge and at > http://www.python.org/2.0/ Thanks! also to anybody else contributing to the release process, in particular to amk for his ongoing maintainance of various pieces on python.org, and his efforts in getting the word out. Regards, Martin

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2.0 articles
by Andrew Kuchling 20 Oct '00

20 Oct '00

Before we all become focused on new features for Python 2.1, it would be nice to do a bit more work on raising awareness of the new features in 2.0. There's little point in developing software if you don't actually tell anyone about it, after all. I'd like to suggest that people try to write some brief articles, just a few pages long, each covering a particular feature in some detail. Looking through the list of new stuff, the most significant features are: * Unicode support. (Perl's UTF-8 support still seems incomplete, with developers referring to it as "unusable", so we should definitely try and point out that we have working Unicode support right now.) * Distutils: an introduction to writing setup scripts for simple Python modules, packages, and C extensions. * The new XML tools. * The new gettext support. * Maybe the linuxaudiodev module, too. Any other suggestions? If the story of how a particular feature was implemented is interesting, then that would also make a fine topic for a more developer-oriented publication such as DDJ. SRE or Unicode may be the best candidates for this sort of thing, as their implementation presented various tricky technical problems along the way. Any volunteers? --amk

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Re: [Python-Dev] 2.0 articles
by Michael Hudson 19 Oct '00

19 Oct '00

Andrew Kuchling <akuchlin(a)mems-exchange.org> writes: > Before we all become focused on new features for Python 2.1, it would > be nice to do a bit more work on raising awareness of the new features > in 2.0. There's little point in developing software if you don't > actually tell anyone about it, after all. > > I'd like to suggest that people try to write some brief articles, just > a few pages long, each covering a particular feature in some detail. [snip] > Any volunteers? It's not as exciting as Unicode or XML, but I've thrashed out a few hundred words on the new "setdefault" dictionary method. It's up here: http://starship.python.net/crew/mwh/hacks/setdefault.html Tell me what you think! There's the beginning of a longer example in a comment at the bottom, but I felt it was getting a bit long-winded to be of interest. Cheers, M. -- If i don't understand lisp, it would be wise to not bray about how lisp is stupid or otherwise criticize, because my stupidity would be archived and open for all in the know to see. -- Xah, comp.lang.lisp

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This Project Has Not Released Any Files
by Martin v. Loewis 19 Oct '00

19 Oct '00

What is the reason for not publishing Python 2.0 on SF for download? SF certainly wouldn't be the primary source, but I think at least the source distribution should be available there, with the release notes telling where to get binary distributions (BeOpen, ActiveState, who else?) Regards, Martin

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Ready for Python 2.1 ?
by M.-A. Lemburg 19 Oct '00

19 Oct '00

Before starting to work on postponed patches and checking them in: is the current CVS tree ready for new checkins (tags applied, etc.) ? -- Marc-Andre Lemburg ______________________________________________________________________ Business: http://www.lemburg.com/ Python Pages: http://www.lemburg.com/python/

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build problems large and small on FreeBSD
by Jeremy Hylton 18 Oct '00

18 Oct '00

I just built the latest CVS sources on a FreeBSD machine (4.1-RELEASE FreeBSD). There are a number of compiler warnings, all having to do with redefinitions, plus some linker warnings and a test failure. I don't have time to investigate further, but thought I'd let people know in case someone else has time to take a look. test_math failed -- overflowing exp() didn't trigger OverflowError Python 2.0c1 (#2, Oct 13 2000, 15:50:26) [GCC 2.95.2 19991024 (release)] on freebsd4 Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> import math >>> math.exp(1200) Inf The warnings from the linker seem harmless enough. I don't know why it is complaining about setkey and des_setkey. /usr/lib/libc.so: WARNING! setkey(3) not present in the system! /usr/lib/libc.so: warning: this program uses gets(), which is unsafe. /usr/lib/libc.so: warning: mktemp() possibly used unsafely; consider using mkstemp() /usr/lib/libc.so: WARNING! des_setkey(3) not present in the system! /usr/lib/libc.so: WARNING! encrypt(3) not present in the system! /usr/lib/libc.so: warning: tmpnam() possibly used unsafely; consider using mkstemp() /usr/lib/libc.so: warning: this program uses f_prealloc(), which is stupid. /usr/lib/libc.so: WARNING! des_cipher(3) not present in the system! /usr/lib/libc.so: warning: tempnam() possibly used unsafely; consider using mkstemp() The compiler-time warnings look like they are caused by a configure problem. If so, I don't know how to fix it :-). gcc -O3 -I../../Python/../Include -I.. -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -c ../../Python/thread.c In file included from /usr/include/unistd.h:42, from ../../Python/thread.c:28: /usr/include/sys/unistd.h:71: warning: `_POSIX_THREADS' redefined ../config.h:136: warning: this is the location of the previous definition In file included from ../../Python/thread.c:118: ../../Python/thread_pthread.h:59: warning: `pthread_attr_default' redefined /usr/include/pthread.h:158: warning: this is the location of the previous definition ../../Python/thread_pthread.h:60: warning: `pthread_mutexattr_default' redefined /usr/include/pthread.h:157: warning: this is the location of the previous definition ../../Python/thread_pthread.h:61: warning: `pthread_condattr_default' redefined /usr/include/pthread.h:156: warning: this is the location of the previous definition Jeremy

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Re: [XML-SIG] PyXML home page on SF
by Nicolas Chauvat 18 Oct '00

18 Oct '00

On Tue, 17 Oct 2000, Martin v. Loewis wrote: [about my suggestion concerning a SourceForge dedicated to python] That was only a suggestion, not a demand as someone stated. I would love to set up a pythonforge myself if I had the resources, unfortunately I don't... maybe in a few months? Time will tell. For now I'll just go back to hacking and keep quiet. Cheers, :) -- Nicolas Chauvat http://www.logilab.com - "Mais où est donc Ornicar ?" - LOGILAB, Paris (France)

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RE: Possible bug (was Re: numpy, overflow, inf, ieee, and rich comparison)
by Tim Peters 18 Oct '00

18 Oct '00

We need a glibc expert! Anyone qualify? [Huaiyu Zhu] > ... > This is very likely to be a 2.0 bug. Or a 1.5.2 bug. I have to keep saying this stuff is a platform-dependent crap shoot, because it is (I too prefer that Python underflow silently by default, though). > Just to make sure, I have used freshly downloaded source code of > both 1.5.2 and 2.0b2, then > ./configure > make > ./python > > from math import * > exp(-746) > > I got 0.0 from 1.5.2 but OverflowError: math range error from 2.0b2. > > The file mathmodule.c has quite some differences between the two versions, > mostly related to the ANSIfication. I'm not sure where the problem is. It's not in mathmodule.c. > I haven't tried the 2.0c1 yet, as the site is not available. Can > other Unix users confirm this behavior? I went over to Guido's and forced him to try it. He sees the same behavior: after building 1.5.2 and some flavor of 2.0 w/ the same gcc and libraries, 1.5.2 Python silently returns 0 and (some flavor of) 2.0 raises OverflowError. But there is no code in Python that accounts for the difference. Running it under the debugger, the platform exp leaves errno at 0 under 1.5.2 but sets errno to ERANGE (34) under 2.0. Since the platform exp was the only conceivable cause for this difference, it's not surprising that the debugger confirmed that the platform exp is in fact the cause. So the remaining question is why the same exp from the same library has different errno behavior depending on which version of Python it's called from. *That* one we couldn't answer, after a fruitless time digging thru the Byzantine glibc source code trying to reverse engineer it. Their exp *can* display different error behavior at runtime depending on several obscure things, but they're too obscure to relate back clearly to anything Python is doing. The 2.0 behavior (set errno to ERANGE on exp underflow) appears to be what the glibc exp author believes POSIX mandates, and is one of their exp's possible runtime behaviors, and your own little C program (which you posted earlier) suggests that's the default behavior under gcc + glibc. So presumably 1.5.2 config was such as to inhibit the default behavior. However, nobody changed this on purpose, so it smells like an unintended side effect of some other (currently unknown) config change. I don't know what to do next. I can't pursue it myself, and you've seen from the lack of replies to your posts that I'm the only who'll even listen to you <wink>. Guido suggests that one big change in 2.0 is that we're including a lot more std headers than we used to. It could well be that one of those #defines some God-forsaken preprocessor symbol one of whose five meanings (documented or not) is "use POSIX-conformant libm error reporting", but which someone #include'd in 2.0 to make (who knows?) sockets work right on some other flavor of Unix. Don't know. Unix config is a mess, and so is glibc. Best hope now is for someone intimately familiar with glibc internals to jump in and own this. staring-at-the-python-source-remains-pointless-for-this-one-ly y'rs - tim

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Publicity for 2.0 release?
by Andrew Kuchling 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

Is BeOpen doing any publicity for the release of 2.0? For example, issuing a press release and sending it to lots of different publications, such as DDJ, Web Development, Windows programming magazines, whatever that XML magazine is called, etc.? (Hmm... www.beopen.com hasn't been updated to mention the new release -- nor even 2.0c1.) --amk

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Re: [XML-SIG] PyXML home page on SF
by Fred L. Drake, Jr. 17 Oct '00

17 Oct '00

[Moved to python-dev, since the shift has begun.] Nicolas Chauvat writes: > I'm sure several people from PythonLabs are on this list. What is their > opinion ? I rather like letting the SourceForge crew take care of running the service. Running a website that needs constant updates is no trivial matter, and SourceForge is *much* more complex than that! I have a great deal of respect for the hard work that I know goes into running SourceForge, and would rather see that effort bolstered by volunteers & contributions (docs, code, whatever) by people who are able, than to see the efforts splintered. -Fred -- Fred L. Drake, Jr. <fdrake at beopen.com> BeOpen PythonLabs Team Member

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