-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On behalf of the Python development team and the Python community, I'm happy to announce the first alpha release of Python 2.6, and the third alpha release of Python 3.0. Python 2.6 is not only the next advancement in the Python 2 series, it is also a transitionary release, helping developers begin to prepare their code for Python 3.0. As such, many features are being backported from Python 3.0 to 2.6. It makes sense to release both versions in at the same time, the precedence for this having been set with the Python 1.6 and 2.0 releases. During the alpha testing cycle we will be releasing both versions in lockstep, on a monthly release cycle. The releases will happen on the last Friday of every month. If this schedule works well, we will continue releasing in lockstep during the beta program. See PEP 361 for schedule details: http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0361/ Please note that these are alpha releases, and as such are not suitable for production environments. We continue to strive for a high degree of quality, but there are still some known problems and the feature sets have not been finalized. These alphas are being released to solicit feedback and hopefully discover bugs, as well as allowing you to determine how changes in 2.6 and 3.0 might impact you. If you find things broken or incorrect, please submit a bug report at http://bugs.python.org For more information and downloadable distributions, see the Python 2.6 web site: http://www.python.org/download/releases/2.6/ and the Python 3.0 web site: http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.0/ We are planning a number of additional alpha releases, with the final release schedule still to be determined. Enjoy, - -Barry Barry Warsaw barry@python.org Python 2.6/3.0 Release Manager (on behalf of the entire python-dev team) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.8 (Darwin) iQCVAwUBR8mlu3EjvBPtnXfVAQKePAQAgx6w9wztfJaSWkbKrbwur2U6t6o5aIY5 pyMa00CZWY06p8099BztcSjgp5rKrd6/9V7cJ0NP7NLZ+tz20uRfyI8uqoIYBIWC ibJay6SSnzgOQM3PRIJV/K/m0dVPPPVD1LDnoEvuu+cKUpV434yHdgWkMPswsxUd fLydrXABlOM= =l6aj -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----