RELEASED Python 2.6a1 and 3.0a3

[Barry Warsaw]

-----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 at 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-----