What's New in Python 2.1c2?

===========================

A flurry of small changes, and one showstopper fixed in the nick of

time made it necessary to release another release candidate. The list

here is the *complete* list of patches (except version updates):

- Tim discovered a nasty bug in the dictionary code, caused by

PyDict_Next() calling dict_resize(), and the GC code's use of

PyDict_Next() violating an assumption in dict_items(). This was

fixed with considerable amounts of band-aid, but the net effect is a

saner and more robust implementation.

- Made a bunch of symbols static that were accidentally global.

Build and Ports

- The setup.py script didn't check for a new enough version of zlib

(1.1.3 is needed). Now it does.

- Changed "make clean" target to also remove shared libraries.

- Added a more general warning about the SGI Irix optimizer to README.

Library

- Fix a bug in urllib.basejoin("http://host", "../file.html") which

omitted the slash between host and file.html.

- The mailbox module's _Mailbox class contained a completely broken

and undocumented seek() method. Ripped it out.

- Fixed a bunch of typos in various library modules (urllib2, smtpd,

sgmllib, netrc, chunk) found by Neil Norwitz's PyChecker.

- Fixed a few last-minute bugs in unittest.

Extensions

- Reverted the patch to the OpenSSL code in socketmodule.c to support

RAND_status() and the EGD, and the subsequent patch that tried to

fix it for pre-0.9.5 versions; the problem with the patch is that on

some systems it issues a warning whenever socket is imported, and

that's unacceptable.

Tests

- Fixed the pickle tests to work with "import test.test_pickle".

- Tweaked test_locale.py to actually run the test Windows.

- In distutils/archive_util.py, call zipfile.ZipFile() with mode "w",

not "wb" (which is not a valid mode at all).

- Fix pstats browser crashes. Import readline if it exists to make

the user interface nicer.

- Add "import thread" to the top of test modules that import the

threading module (test_asynchat and test_threadedtempfile). This

prevents test failures caused by a broken threading module resulting

from a previously caught failed import.

- Changed test_asynchat.py to set the SO_REUSEADDR option; this was

needed on some platforms (e.g. Solaris 8) when the tests are run

twice in succession.

- Skip rather than fail test_sunaudiodev if no audio device is found.

What's New in Python 2.1c1?

===========================

This list was significantly updated when 2.1c2 was released; the 2.1c1

release didn't mention most changes that were actually part of 2.1c1:

Legal

- Copyright was assigned to the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and a

PSF license (very similar to the CNRI license) was added.

- The CNRI copyright notice was updated to include 2001.

Core

- Fixed a core dump with "%#x" % 0, and changed the semantics so that

"%#x" now always prepends "0x", even if the value is zero.

- Fixed some nits in the bytecode compiler.

- Fixed core dumps when calling certain kinds of non-functions.

- Fixed various core dumps caused by reference count bugs.

Build and Ports

- Use INSTALL_SCRIPT to install script files.

- Updated RISCOS port.

- Updated BeOS port and notes.

- Various other porting problems resolved.

Library

- The TERMIOS and SOCKET modules are now truly obsolete and

unnecessary. Their symbols are incorporated in the termios and

socket modules.

- Fixed some 64-bit bugs in pickle, cPickle, and struct, and added

better tests for pickling.

- threading: make Condition.wait() robust against KeyboardInterrupt.

- zipfile: add support to zipfile to support opening an archive

represented by an open file rather than a file name. Fix bug where

the archive was not properly closed. Fixed a bug in this bugfix

where flush() was called for a read-only file.

- imputil: added an uninstall() method to the ImportManager.

- Canvas: fixed bugs in lower() and tkraise() methods.

- SocketServer: API change (added overridable close_request() method)

so that the TCP server can explicitly close the request.

- pstats: Eric Raymond added a simple interactive statistics browser,

invoked when the module is run as a script.

- locale: fixed a problem in format().

- webbrowser: made it work when the BROWSER environment variable has a

value like "/usr/bin/netscape". Made it auto-detect Konqueror for

KDE 2. Fixed some other nits.

- unittest: changes to allow using a different exception than

AssertionError, and added a few more function aliases. Some other

small changes.

- urllib, urllib2: fixed redirect problems and a coupleof other nits.

- asynchat: fixed a critical bug in asynchat that slipped through the

2.1b2 release. Fixed another rare bug.

- Fix some unqualified except: clauses (always a bad code example).

XML

- pyexpat: new API get_version_string().

- Fixed some minidom bugs.

Extensions

- Fixed a core dump in _weakref. Removed the weakref.mapping()

function (it adds nothing to the API).

- Rationalized the use of header files in the readline module, to make

it compile (albeit with some warnings) with the very recent readline

4.2, without breaking for earlier versions.

- Hopefully fixed a buffering problem in linuxaudiodev.

- Attempted a fix to make the OpenSSL support in the socket module

work again with pre-0.9.5 versions of OpenSSL.

Tests

- Added a test case for asynchat and asyncore.

- Removed coupling between tests where one test failing could break

another.

Tools

- Ping added an interactive help browser to pydoc, fixed some nits

in the rest of the pydoc code, and added some features to his

inspect module.

- An updated python-mode.el version 4.1 which integrates Ken

Manheimer's pdbtrack.el. This makes debugging Python code via pdb

much nicer in XEmacs and Emacs. When stepping through your program

with pdb, in either the shell window or the *Python* window, the

source file and line will be tracked by an arrow. Very cool!

- IDLE: syntax warnings in interactive mode are changed into errors.

- Some improvements to Tools/webchecker (ignore some more URL types,

follow some more links).

- Brought the Tools/compiler package up to date.

- socket module: the OpenSSL code now adds support for RAND_status()

and EGD (Entropy Gathering Device).