On behalf of the Python development team and the Python community, I'm happy to announce the first release candidate of Python 2.4. Python 2.4c1 is a release candidate - we'd greatly appreciate it if you could download it, kick the tires and let us know of any problems you find, but it is probably not suitable for production usage. At this point, we're particularly interested in build bugs. If you could grab the source archive, build it and then run the test suite, we'd appreciate it. http://www.python.org/2.4 Notable changes in rc1 include a handful of bug fixes, including a thread shutdown race bug. See either the highlights, the What's New in Python 2.4, or the detailed NEWS file -- all available from the Python 2.4 webpage. This is the first release candidate of Python 2.4. Python 2.4 is now close to release - there should be few or no new features, merely bug fixes. Assuming no problems, we're looking at a final release around the end of November (if there are problems, there will be another release candidate). Please log any problems you have with this release in the SourceForge bug tracker (noting that you're using 2.4c1): http://sourceforge.net/bugs/?group_id=5470 Enjoy the new release, Anthony Anthony Baxter anthony@python.org Python Release Manager (on behalf of the entire python-dev team)