On behalf of the Python development team, I'm happy to announce the immediate availability of Python 2.7.2 release candidate 1. 2.7.2 is the second in bugfix release for the Python 2.7 series. 2.7 is the last major verison of the 2.x line and will be receiving bug fixes while new feature development focuses on 3.x. 2.7 includes many features that were first released in Python 3.1. The faster io module, the new nested with statement syntax, improved float repr, set literals, dictionary views, and the memoryview object have been backported from 3.1. Other features include an ordered dictionary implementation, unittests improvements, a new sysconfig module, auto-numbering of fields in the str/unicode format method, and support for ttk Tile in Tkinter. For a more extensive list of changes in 2.7, see http://doc.python.org/dev/whatsnew/2.7.html or Misc/NEWS in the Python distribution. To download Python 2.7.2rc1 visit: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7.1/ The 2.7.2 changelog is at: http://hg.python.org/cpython/file/439396b06416/Misc/NEWS 2.7 documentation can be found at: http://docs.python.org/2.7/ This is a preview release. Assuming no major problems, 2.7.2 will be released in two weeks. Please report any bugs you find to http://bugs.python.org/ Enjoy! -- Benjamin Peterson Release Manager benjamin at python.org (on behalf of the entire python-dev team and 2.7.2's contributors)