[New-bugs-announce] [issue15863] Fine-grained info about Python versions which support changes introduced in micro releases

[Alexander Konovalenko]

New submission from Alexander Konovalenko:

Some security fixes and bug fixes that are simultaneously issued for multiple Python versions require changes to the documentation. I'm now looking at the hash randomization vulnerability that was fixed in 2.6.8 and 2.7.3.

The docs always mention the release in which a new feature was added. That's great. But for a security fix such as the bug in question, the set of versions which support it doesn't look like "2.x.y or later". 

The documentation for the -R command-line option and the PYTHONHASHSEED environment variable says "New in version 2.6.8". A reader who is not familiar with the context would infer that those feature are supported in Python 2.7 through 2.7.2, which is not the case. The docs should say "New in version 2.6.8 and 2.7.3".
http://docs.python.org/using/cmdline.html#cmdoption-R
http://docs.python.org/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONHASHSEED

The documentation for the sys.flags.hash_randomization attribute says "New in version 2.7.3". Again, that leaves out the version 2.6.8 and future versions in the 2.6.x branch, which presumably support the new attribute. The docs should say "New in version 2.6.8 and 2.7.3".
http://docs.python.org/library/sys.html#sys.flags

Disclaimer: I did not test the relevant micro releases to see whether they actually support those features. Just checked the release dates and applied common sense.

If you know of any other micro release bugfixes that were mentioned in the docs, the same considerations apply to them. Please verify the docs are correct, fix them or file appropriate bugs.

----------
assignee: docs at python
components: Documentation
messages: 169841
nosy: alexkon, docs at python
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Fine-grained info about Python versions which support changes introduced in micro releases
versions: Python 2.6, Python 2.7

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue15863>
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