[Python-Dev] Python 1.6 planning

[Jeremy Hylton]

We discussed plans for Python 1.6 at the all-hands PythonLabs staff meeting
yesterday.  (At this meeting, the PythonLabs staff closed ranks and agreed
to say that Tim Peters exists.)
I'd like to quickly summarize plans.

The target release date for Python 1.6 beta 1 is early July.  Any code that
is going to be in the beta must be checked in before July 1.

Tim Peters pushed us to take care of the patches backlog.  Our plan is to
close the patches list and move all patch management to Sourceforge.  We
know the list is broken; we don't know that Sourceforge is broken.

There are a bunch of modules and technical issues that must be resolved one
way or another.


SRE-- /F needs to finish this up.  Unanswered question is whether the beta
will ship with known bugs.

GC-- Neil's garbage collector will be shipped as experimental feature
requiring configure option.

XML-- Some parts of the XML package will be included in the library under
the xmlcore package.  SAX and DOM (provided that it is stable enough).
Andrew gets to decide, I believe.

List comprehensions -- Next release.  Despite the love fest at the meeting
(everyone seems to want them), there is no way an implementation will be
ready or stable enough.

httplib-- We will include Greg Stein's new httplib, provided that it
supports an old-style HTTPS class.

curses-- one return type needs to be implemented (5-tuple).  Andrew will
finish ASAP.  ESR's ascii module will be part of the curses package.

imputil-- The imputil module will be dropped in the std library to enable
wider distribution, but no changes will be made to the normal import
machinery.

Unicode shorthand-- Andrew will look at Bill Tutt's code. We intend to add
it.

Unicode compression-- We need to find out if Christian will be able to
provide a compressed database.

ldso_aix-- I still don't understand, but I didn't really try; Vladimir must
help

threads-- They will be on by default if the platform supports.

gettext-- Barry will check in his gettext module.

atexit.py-- add it

Jeremy