In keeping with the "release early, release often" mantra of the open source community, Enthought is pleased to announce Python Enthought Edition Version 1.1.0 alpha1. Information page: http://code.enthought.com/enthon/enstaller.shtml Download link: http://code.enthought.com/enstaller/enthought_setup-1.1.0.alpha.msi About Python Enthought Edition 1.1.0 alpha1: -------------------------------------------- This alpha release of 1.1.0 Python Enthought Edition is the first Enthought distribution (and the first Python distribution that we know of) to use individual egg packages (http://peak.telecommunity.com/DevCenter/PythonEggs) rather than a monolithic .exe installer. Python Enthought Edition 1.1.0 alpha1 introduces the "Enstaller" application, which manages selecting, downloading, and installing Python eggs. The initial installer program installs the standard Python software and runs a small script, which downloads, installs, and runs Enstaller. From within Enstaller, you can select individual egg packages from Enthought's egg repository, or select the "enthon-1.1.0" package, which installs everything listed in the 1.1.0 alpha1 distribution. Python 2.4.3, Enthought Edition 1.1.0 is available only for Windows for the alpha1 release. It includes eggs for the following packages: Numpy SciPy IPython wxPython PIL mingw MayaVi Scientific Python VTK and many more... After installing Python Enthought Edition 1.1.0 alpha1, you can launch Enstaller again later, to upgrade, uninstall, inspect, or add new packages to your Python installation. More information is available about this and all other open source software written or released by Enthought, Inc., at <http://code.enthought.com>. A Note About the License ------------------------ The Enstaller application, released under the same BSD2 Open Source License as all other Enthought Open Source, is and will remain free. Access to Enthought's egg repository is free to all during the alpha and beta test phases, and will remain free for individual and academic use. After the official release of Enstaller, commercial and government users will be asked to pay a nominal, per-seat, annual fee if they'd like continued access to the egg repository (to help defray the costs of maintaining the repository). The Enstaller application may be used to access other egg repositories (i.e. the Python Cheese Shop--see release notes below), not just Enthought's repository. 1.1.0 alpha1 Release Notes -------------------------- This release is early alpha and has several known bugs, as well as a long list of features that have not yet been implemented. Some of the more obvious ones are listed below: * An egg of the standard documents that are typically included in Python Enthought Edition releases is not yet available. * An egg of the complete Enthought Tool Suite (ETS), a package typically available in Python Enthought Edition releases, is not yet available. However a subset of the ETS that includes Traits and TraitsUI is installed with Enstaller. * The uninstall feature does not properly uninstall a package if it is in use by any other process, including Enstaller. * In some cases, installing a package that is already installed causes errors. * The metadata about an installed package might not display in the Enstaller dialog box, in most cases because the installed package does not include metadata. This issue will improve as Enthought enhances the eggs available in the Enthought egg repository, * Packages that modify the system registry (typically, adding directories to the search PATH) require the user to log out and then log back in before the settings take effect. * Changing the "find_links" preference, which allows you to add additional repositories to search for eggs, often causes a traceback inspector to appear. You can safely close the inspector and add the new repository. * Some packages that launch post-install scripts can display error messages if they fail for any reason, which can require manual intervention. These errors are usually caused by inadequate permissions for creating or moving files. * Accessing the Cheese Shop repository takes a very long time, but we have several enhancements underway to vastly improve this which will be in future releases soon. At the moment however, a bug prevents Enstaller from downloading eggs from the Cheese Shop for install, and access to it with Enstaller is limited to browsing only. If you'd like to browse the Cheese Shop, enter "http://python.org/pypi/" (the final '/' is required) in the "find_links" field under Preferences. * IPython may have problems when starting for the first time if a previous version of IPython was run on the system. If you see "WARNING: could not import user config", either follow the directions that follow the warning, or delete ipy_user_conf.py from the IPython directory. * Some users report that older matplotlibrc files are not compatible with the version of matplotlib installed with this release. Please refer to the matplotlib mailing list <http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=80706> for further help. We are grateful to everyone who has helped test this release. If you'd like to contribute suggestions or report a bug, you can do so at https://svn.enthought.com/enthought. -- Rick Ratzel - Enthought, Inc. 515 Congress Avenue, Suite 2100 - Austin, Texas 78701 512-536-1057 x229 - Fax: 512-536-1059 http://www.enthought.com