[python-win32] [ANN] pywin32 build 300 released

[Mark Hammond]

Hi all,
   I'm happy to announce the release of pywin32 build 300. 
Significantly, this is the first release to exclusively support Python 3 
- Python 2 is no longer supported. All Python source files in the repo 
are now in Python 3 syntax. To celebrate, the build numbers have jumped 
to 300 - there will not be a build 229.

There were significant changes in this release - you are encouraged to 
read the changes below carefully

Downloads are available at:

   https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/releases/tag/b300

and via pypi.

For initial support (eg, to ask questions about the release etc), please 
contact this mailing-list (python-win32 at python.org).  If you want to 
report a bug, please do so at https://github.com/mhammond/pywin32/issues

As always, thanks to everyone who contributed to this release, both in 
terms of code and reporting bugs - there were a number of new 
contributors which is great to see,

Cheers,

Mark.

Changes:

Since build 228:
----------------
* Fixed a bug where win32com.client.VARIANT params were returned in the 
reverse order. This only happened when win32com.client.VARIANT was 
explicitly used (ie, not when normal params were passed) For example:

       arg1 = VARIANT(pythoncom.VT_R4 | pythoncom.VT_BYREF, 2.0)
       arg2 = VARIANT(pythoncom.VT_BOOL | pythoncom.VT_BYREF, True)
       object.SomeFunction(arg1, arg2)

after this call, `arg1.value` was actually the value for `arg2`, and 
vice-versa (#1303, #622).

* Fixed a bug that Pythonwin had an empty `sys.argv` (@kxrob in #1607)

* Fixed a bug that prevented win32process.ReadProcessMemory() from 
working in all scenarios (#1599)

* Changed how Services implemented with 
win32serviceutil.ServiceFramework  report that they have stopped. Now if 
the SvcRun() method (or the SvcDoRun() method, which is called by 
SvcRun() by default) raises on Exception, the Service will report a 
final SERVICE_STOPPED status with a non-zero error code. This will cause 
the Service's recovery actions to be triggered if the Service has the 
"Enable actions for stops with errors" option enabled. (#1563, Lincoln 
Puzey)

* adodbapi connect() method now accepts a "mode" keyword argument which 
is the "Mode" property to set on the ADO "Connection" object before 
opening the Connection. See "ConnectModeEnum" for valid values. (Lincoln 
Puzey)

* The Windows 10 SDK is now used to build the project. This shouldn't 
cause any visible changes, but should make it much easier to build the 
project yourself.

Python 2 is no longer supported - so long, Python 2, you served us well!

Notable changes in this transition:

* Python 3 builds used to erroneously turn "bytes" into a tuple of 
integers instead of a buffer type object. Because this special-casing is 
important for performance when using massive buffers, this has been 
fixed in Python 3 so it matches the old Python 2 behavior. If you use 
arrays of VT_UI1 and expect get back tuples of integers, your code may 
break.

* Pythonwin's default encoding is now utf-8 (#1559)

* The build environment has been greatly simplified - you just need 
Visual Studio and a Windows 10 SDK. (The free compilers probably work 
too, but haven't been tested - let me know your experiences!)