[Python-Dev] [RELEASED] Python 3.3.0 alpha 4

[Georg Brandl]

On behalf of the Python development team, I'm happy to announce the
fourth alpha release of Python 3.3.0.

This is a preview release, and its use is not recommended in
production settings.

Python 3.3 includes a range of improvements of the 3.x series, as well
as easier porting between 2.x and 3.x.  Major new features and changes
in the 3.3 release series are:

* PEP 380, syntax for delegating to a subgenerator ("yield from")
* PEP 393, flexible string representation (doing away with the
  distinction between "wide" and "narrow" Unicode builds)
* A C implementation of the "decimal" module, with up to 80x speedup
  for decimal-heavy applications
* The import system (__import__) is based on importlib by default
* The new "packaging" module (also known as distutils2, and released
  standalone under this name), implementing the new packaging formats
  and deprecating "distutils"
* The new "lzma" module with LZMA/XZ support
* PEP 405, virtual environment support in core
* PEP 420, namespace package support
* PEP 3151, reworking the OS and IO exception hierarchy
* PEP 3155, qualified name for classes and functions
* PEP 409, suppressing exception context
* PEP 414, explicit Unicode literals to help with porting
* PEP 418, extended platform-independent clocks in the "time" module
* PEP 412, a new key-sharing dictionary implementation that
  significantly saves memory for object-oriented code
* The new "faulthandler" module that helps diagnosing crashes
* The new "unittest.mock" module
* The new "ipaddress" module
* A "collections.ChainMap" class for linking mappings to a single unit
* Wrappers for many more POSIX functions in the "os" and "signal"
  modules, as well as other useful functions such as "sendfile()"
* Hash randomization, introduced in earlier bugfix releases, is now
  switched on by default

For a more extensive list of changes in 3.3.0, see

    http://docs.python.org/3.3/whatsnew/3.3.html (*)

To download Python 3.3.0 visit:

    http://www.python.org/download/releases/3.3.0/

Please consider trying Python 3.3.0 with your code and reporting any bugs
you may notice to:

    http://bugs.python.org/


Enjoy!

(*) Please note that this document is usually finalized late in the release
    cycle and therefore may have stubs and missing entries at this point.

--
Georg Brandl, Release Manager
georg at python.org
(on behalf of the entire python-dev team and 3.3's contributors)