[Python-Dev] Python 2.1b1 released
Guido van Rossum
guido@digicool.com
Fri, 02 Mar 2001 17:46:09 -0500
With great pleasure I announce the release of Python 2.1b1. This is a
big step towards the release of Python 2.1; the final release is
expected to take place in mid April.
Find out all about 2.1b1, including docs and downloads (Windows
installer and source tarball), at the 2.1 release page:
http://www.python.org/2.1/
WHAT'S NEW?
-----------
For the big picture, see Andrew Kuchling's What New in Python 2.1:
http://www.amk.ca/python/2.1/
For more detailed release notes, see SourceForge:
http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=25924
The big news since 2.1a2 was released a month ago:
- Nested Scopes (PEP 227)[*] are now optional. They must be enabled
by including the statement "from __future__ import nested_scopes" at
the beginning of a module (PEP 236). Nested scopes will be a
standard feature in Python 2.2.
- Compile-time warnings are now generated for a number of conditions
that will break or change in meaning when nested scopes are enabled.
- The new tool *pydoc* displays module documentation, extracted from
doc strings. It works in a text environment as well as in a GUI
environment (where it cooperates with a web browser). On Windows,
this is in the Start menu as "Module Docs".
- Case-sensitive import. On systems with case-insensitive but
case-preserving file systems, such as Windows (including Cygwin) and
MacOS, import now continues to search the next directory on sys.path
when a case mismatch is detected. See PEP 235 for the full scoop.
- New platforms. Python 2.1 now fully supports MacOS X, Cygwin, and
RISCOS.
[*] For PEPs (Python Enhancement Proposals), see the PEP index:
http://python.sourceforge.net/peps/
I hope to see you all next week at the Python9 conference in Long
Beach, CA:
http://www.python9.org
--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)