+++++++++++

Python News

+++++++++++

What's New in Python 3.3.0?

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

*Release date: 29-Sep-2012*

Core and Builtins

-----------------

- Issue #16046: Fix loading sourceless legacy .pyo files.

- Issue #16060: Fix refcounting bug when __trunc__ returns an object

whose __int__ gives a non-integer. Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

Extension Modules

-----------------

- Issue #16012: Fix a regression in pyexpat. The parser's UseForeignDTD()

method doesn't require an argument again.

What's New in Python 3.3.0 Release Candidate 3?

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

*Release date: 23-Sep-2012*

Core and Builtins

-----------------

- Issue #15900: Fix reference leak in PyUnicode_TranslateCharmap().

- Issue #15926: Fix crash after multiple reinitializations of the interpreter.

- Issue #15895: Fix FILE pointer leak in one error branch of

PyRun_SimpleFileExFlags() when filename points to a pyc/pyo file, closeit

is false an and set_main_loader() fails.

- Fixes for a few crash and memory leak regressions found by Coverity.

Library

-------

- Issue #15882: Change _decimal to accept any coefficient tuple when

constructing infinities. This is done for backwards compatibility

with decimal.py: Infinity coefficients are undefined in _decimal

(in accordance with the specification).

- Issue #15925: Fix a regression in email.util where the parsedate() and

parsedate_tz() functions did not return None anymore when the argument could

not be parsed.

Extension Modules

-----------------

- Issue #15973: Fix a segmentation fault when comparing datetime timezone

objects.

- Issue #15977: Fix memory leak in Modules/_ssl.c when the function

_set_npn_protocols() is called multiple times, thanks to Daniel Sommermann.

- Issue #15969: faulthandler module: rename dump_tracebacks_later() to

dump_traceback_later() and cancel_dump_tracebacks_later() to

cancel_dump_traceback_later().

- _decimal module: use only C 89 style comments.

What's New in Python 3.3.0 Release Candidate 2?

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

*Release date: 09-Sep-2012*

Core and Builtins

-----------------

- Issue #13992: The trashcan mechanism is now thread-safe. This eliminates

sporadic crashes in multi-thread programs when several long deallocator

chains ran concurrently and involved subclasses of built-in container

types.

- Issue #15784: Modify OSError.__str__() to better distinguish between

errno error numbers and Windows error numbers.

- Issue #15781: Fix two small race conditions in import's module locking.

Library

-------

- Issue #15847: Fix a regression in argparse, which did not accept tuples

as argument lists anymore.

- Issue #15828: Restore support for C extensions in imp.load_module().

- Issue #15340: Fix importing the random module when /dev/urandom cannot

be opened. This was a regression caused by the hash randomization patch.

- Issue #10650: Deprecate the watchexp parameter of the Decimal.quantize()

method.

- Issue #15785: Modify window.get_wch() API of the curses module: return

a character for most keys, and an integer for special keys, instead of

always returning an integer. So it is now possible to distinguish special

keys like keypad keys.

- Issue #14223: Fix window.addch() of the curses module for special characters

like curses.ACS_HLINE: the Python function addch(int) and addch(bytes) is now

calling the C function waddch()/mvwaddch() (as it was done in Python 3.2),

instead of wadd_wch()/mvwadd_wch(). The Python function addch(str) is still

calling the C function wadd_wch()/mvwadd_wch() if the Python curses is linked

to libncursesw.

Build

-----

- Issue #15822: Really ensure 2to3 grammar pickles are properly installed

(replaces fixes for Issue #15645).

Documentation

-------------

- Issue #15814: The memoryview enhancements in 3.3.0 accidentally permitted

the hashing of multi-dimensional memorviews and memoryviews with multi-byte

item formats. The intended restrictions have now been documented - they

will be correctly enforced in 3.3.1

What's New in Python 3.3.0 Release Candidate 1?

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

*Release date: 25-Aug-2012*

Core and Builtins

-----------------

- Issue #15573: memoryview comparisons are now performed by value with full

support for any valid struct module format definition.

- Issue #15316: When an item in the fromlist for __import__ doesn't exist,

don't raise an error, but if an exception is raised as part of an import do

let that propagate.

- Issue #15778: ensure that str(ImportError(msg)) returns a str

even when msg isn't a str.

- Issue #2051: Source file permission bits are once again correctly

copied to the cached bytecode file. (The migration to importlib

reintroduced this problem because these was no regression test. A test

has been added as part of this patch)

- Issue #15761: Fix crash when PYTHONEXECUTABLE is set on Mac OS X.

- Issue #15726: Fix incorrect bounds checking in PyState_FindModule.

Patch by Robin Schreiber.

- Issue #15604: Update uses of PyObject_IsTrue() to check for and handle

errors correctly. Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #14846: importlib.FileFinder now handles the case where the

directory being searched is removed after a previous import attempt

Library

-------

- Issue #13370: Ensure that ctypes works on Mac OS X when Python is

compiled using the clang compiler

- Issue #13072: The array module's 'u' format code is now deprecated and

will be removed in Python 4.0.

- Issue #15544: Fix Decimal.__float__ to work with payload-carrying NaNs.

- Issue #15776: Allow pyvenv to work in existing directory with --clean.

- Issue #15249: BytesGenerator now correctly mangles From lines (when

requested) even if the body contains undecodable bytes.

- Issue #15777: Fix a refleak in _posixsubprocess.

- Issue ##665194: Update email.utils.localtime to use datetime.astimezone and

correctly handle historic changes in UTC offsets.

- Issue #15199: Fix JavaScript's default MIME type to application/javascript.

Patch by Bohuslav Kabrda.

- Issue #12643: code.InteractiveConsole now respects sys.excepthook when

displaying exceptions (Patch by Aaron Iles)

- Issue #13579: string.Formatter now understands the 'a' conversion specifier.

- Issue #15595: Fix subprocess.Popen(universal_newlines=True)

for certain locales (utf-16 and utf-32 family). Patch by Chris Jerdonek.

- Issue #15477: In cmath and math modules, add workaround for platforms whose

system-supplied log1p function doesn't respect signs of zeros.

- Issue #15715: importlib.__import__() will silence an ImportError when the use

of fromlist leads to a failed import.

- Issue #14669: Fix pickling of connections and sockets on MacOSX

by sending/receiving an acknowledgment after file descriptor transfer.

TestPicklingConnection has been reenabled for MacOSX.

- Issue #11062: Fix adding a message from file to Babyl mailbox.

- Issue #15646: Prevent equivalent of a fork bomb when using

multiprocessing on Windows without the "if __name__ == '__main__'"

idiom.

- Issue #15678: Fix IDLE menus when started from OS X command line

(3.3.0b2 regression).

C API

-----

Extension Modules

-----------------

Tools/Demos

-----------

Documentation

-------------

- Issue #14674: Add a discussion of the json module's standard compliance.

Patch by Chris Rebert.

- Create a 'Concurrent Execution' section in the docs, and split up the

'Optional Operating System Services' section to use a more user-centric

classification scheme (splitting them across the new CE section, IPC and

text processing). Operating system limitatons can be reflected with

the Sphinx :platform: tag, it doesn't make sense as part of the Table of

Contents.

- Issue #4966: Bring the sequence docs up to date for the Py3k transition

and the many language enhancements since they were original written

- The "path importer" misnomer has been replaced with Eric Snow's

more-awkward-but-at-least-not-wrong suggestion of "path based finder" in

the import system reference docs

- Issue #15640: Document importlib.abc.Finder as deprecated.

- Issue #15630: Add an example for "continue" stmt in the tutorial. Patch by

Daniel Ellis.

Tests

-----

- Issue #15747: ZFS always returns EOPNOTSUPP when attempting to set the

UF_IMMUTABLE flag (via either chflags or lchflags); refactor affected

tests in test_posix.py to account for this.

- Issue #15285: Refactor the approach for testing connect timeouts using

two external hosts that have been configured specifically for this type

of test.

- Issue #15743: Remove the deprecated method usage in urllib tests. Patch by

Jeff Knupp.

- Issue #15615: Add some tests for the json module's handling of invalid

input data. Patch by Kushal Das.

Build

-----

- Output lib files for PGO build into PGO directory.

- Pick up 32-bit launcher from PGO directory on 64-bit PGO build.

- Drop PC\python_nt.h as it's not used. Add input dependency on custom

build step.

- Issue #15511: Drop explicit dependency on pythonxy.lib from _decimal

amd64 configuration.

- Add missing PGI/PGO configurations for pywlauncher.

- Issue #15645: Ensure 2to3 grammar pickles are properly installed.

What's New in Python 3.3.0 Beta 2?

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

*Release date: 12-Aug-2012*

Core and Builtins

-----------------

- Issue #15568: Fix the return value of "yield from" when StopIteration is

raised by a custom iterator.

- Issue #13119: sys.stdout and sys.stderr are now using "\r\n" newline on

Windows, as Python 2.

- Issue #15534: Fix the fast-search function for non-ASCII Unicode strings.

- Issue #15508: Fix the docstring for __import__ to have the proper default

value of 0 for 'level' and to not mention negative levels since they are not

supported.

- Issue #15425: Eliminated traceback noise from more situations involving

importlib.

- Issue #14578: Support modules registered in the Windows registry again.

- Issue #15466: Stop using TYPE_INT64 in marshal, to make importlib.h (and other

byte code files) equal between 32-bit and 64-bit systems.

- Issue #1692335: Move initial exception args assignment to

"BaseException.__new__" to help pickling of naive subclasses.

- Issue #12834: Fix PyBuffer_ToContiguous() for non-contiguous arrays.

- Issue #15456: Fix code __sizeof__ after #12399 change. Patch by Serhiy

Storchaka.

- Issue #15404: Refleak in PyMethodObject repr.

- Issue #15394: An issue in PyModule_Create that caused references to be leaked

on some error paths has been fixed. Patch by Julia Lawall.

- Issue #15368: An issue that caused bytecode generation to be non-deterministic

has been fixed.

- Issue #15202: Consistently use the name "follow_symlinks" for new parameters

in os and shutil functions.

- Issue #15314: __main__.__loader__ is now set correctly during interpreter

startup.

- Issue #15111: When a module imported using 'from import' has an ImportError

inside itself, don't mask that fact behind a generic ImportError for the

module itself.

- Issue #15293: Add GC support to the AST base node type.

- Issue #15291: Fix a memory leak where AST nodes where not properly

deallocated.

- Issue #15110: Fix the tracebacks generated by "import xxx" to not show the

importlib stack frames.

- Issue #15020: The program name used to search for Python's path is now

"python3" under Unix, not "python".

- Issue #15033: Fix the exit status bug when modules invoked using -m swith,

return the proper failure return value (1). Patch contributed by Jeff Knupp.

- Issue #15229: An OSError subclass whose __init__ doesn't call back

OSError.__init__ could produce incomplete instances, leading to crashes when

calling str() on them.

- Issue 15307: Virtual environments now use symlinks with framework builds on

Mac OS X, like other POSIX builds.

Library

-------

- Issue #15424: Add a __sizeof__ implementation for array objects. Patch by

Ludwig Hähne.

- Issue #15576: Allow extension modules to act as a package's __init__ module.

- Issue #15502: Have importlib.invalidate_caches() work on sys.meta_path instead

of sys.path_importer_cache.

- Issue #15163: Pydoc shouldn't list __loader__ as module data.

- Issue #15471: Do not use mutable objects as defaults for

importlib.__import__().

- Issue #15559: To avoid a problematic failure mode when passed to the bytes

constructor, objects in the ipaddress module no longer implement __index__

(they still implement __int__ as appropriate)

- Issue #15546: Fix handling of pathological input data in the peek() and

read1() methods of the BZ2File, GzipFile and LZMAFile classes.

- Issue #13052: Fix IDLE crashing when replace string in Search/Replace dialog

ended with '\'. Patch by Roger Serwy.

- Issue #12655: Instead of requiring a custom type, os.sched_getaffinity and

os.sched_setaffinity now use regular sets of integers to represent the CPUs a

process is restricted to.

- Issue #15538: Fix compilation of the getnameinfo() / getaddrinfo() emulation

code. Patch by Philipp Hagemeister.

- Issue #15519: Properly expose WindowsRegistryFinder in importlib (and use the

correct term for it). Original patch by Eric Snow.

- Issue #15502: Bring the importlib ABCs into line with the current state of the

import protocols given PEP 420. Original patch by Eric Snow.

- Issue #15499: Launching a webbrowser in Unix used to sleep for a few seconds.

Original patch by Anton Barkovsky.

- Issue #15463: The faulthandler module truncates strings to 500 characters,

instead of 100, to be able to display long file paths.

- Issue #6056: Make multiprocessing use setblocking(True) on the sockets it

uses. Original patch by J Derek Wilson.

- Issue #15364: Fix sysconfig.get_config_var('srcdir') to be an absolute path.

- Issue #15041: Update "see also" list in tkinter documentation.

- Issue #15413: os.times() had disappeared under Windows.

- Issue #15402: An issue in the struct module that caused sys.getsizeof to

return incorrect results for struct.Struct instances has been fixed. Initial

patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15232: When mangle_from is True, email.Generator now correctly mangles

lines that start with 'From ' that occur in a MIME preamble or epilogue.

- Issue #15094: Incorrectly placed #endif in _tkinter.c. Patch by Serhiy

Storchaka.

- Issue #13922: argparse no longer incorrectly strips '--'s that appear after

the first one.

- Issue #12353: argparse now correctly handles null argument values.

- Issue #10017, issue #14998: Fix TypeError using pprint on dictionaries with

user-defined types as keys or other unorderable keys.

- Issue #15397: inspect.getmodulename() is now based directly on importlib via a

new importlib.machinery.all_suffixes() API.

- Issue #14635: telnetlib will use poll() rather than select() when possible to

avoid failing due to the select() file descriptor limit.

- Issue #15180: Clarify posixpath.join() error message when mixing str & bytes.

- Issue #15343: pkgutil now includes an iter_importer_modules implementation for

importlib.machinery.FileFinder (similar to the way it already handled

zipimport.zipimporter).

- Issue #15314: runpy now sets __main__.__loader__ correctly.

- Issue #15357: The import emulation in pkgutil is now deprecated. pkgutil uses

importlib internally rather than the emulation.

- Issue #15233: Python now guarantees that callables registered with the atexit

module will be called in a deterministic order.

- Issue #15238: shutil.copystat now copies Linux "extended attributes".

- Issue #15230: runpy.run_path now correctly sets __package__ as described in

the documentation.

- Issue #15315: Support VS 2010 in distutils cygwincompiler.

- Issue #15294: Fix a regression in pkgutil.extend_path()'s handling of nested

namespace packages.

- Issue #15056: imp.cache_from_source() and source_from_cache() raise

NotImplementedError when sys.implementation.cache_tag is set to None.

- Issue #15256: Grammatical mistake in exception raised by imp.find_module().

- Issue #5931: wsgiref environ variable SERVER_SOFTWARE will specify an

implementation specific term like CPython, Jython instead of generic "Python".

- Issue #13248: Remove obsolete argument "max_buffer_size" of BufferedWriter and

BufferedRWPair, from the io module.

- Issue #13248: Remove obsolete argument "version" of argparse.ArgumentParser.

- Issue #14814: Implement more consistent ordering and sorting behaviour for

ipaddress objects.

- Issue #14814: ipaddress network objects correctly return NotImplemented when

compared to arbitrary objects instead of raising TypeError.

- Issue #14990: Correctly fail with SyntaxError on invalid encoding declaration.

- Issue #14814: ipaddress now provides more informative error messages when

constructing instances directly (changes permitted during beta due to

provisional API status).

- Issue #15247: FileIO now raises an error when given a file descriptor pointing

to a directory.

- Issue #15261: Stop os.stat(fd) crashing on Windows when fd not open.

- Issue #15166: Implement imp.get_tag() using sys.implementation.cache_tag.

- Issue #15210: Catch KeyError when importlib.__init__ can't find

_frozen_importlib in sys.modules, not ImportError.

- Issue #15030: importlib.abc.PyPycLoader now supports the new source size

header field in .pyc files.

- Issue #5346: Preserve permissions of mbox, MMDF and Babyl mailbox files on

flush().

- Issue #10571: Fix the "--sign" option of distutils' upload command. Patch by

Jakub Wilk.

- Issue #9559: If messages were only added, a new file is no longer created and

renamed over the old file when flush() is called on an mbox, MMDF or Babyl

mailbox.

- Issue 10924: Fixed crypt.mksalt() to use a RNG that is suitable for

cryptographic purpose.

- Issue #15184: Ensure consistent results of OS X configuration tailoring for

universal builds by factoring out common OS X-specific customizations from

sysconfig, distutils.sysconfig, distutils.util, and distutils.unixccompiler

into a new module _osx_support.

C API

-----

- Issue #15610: PyImport_ImportModuleEx() now uses a 'level' of 0 instead of -1.

- Issues #15169, #14599: Strip out the C implementation of

imp.source_from_cache() used by PyImport_ExecCodeModuleWithPathnames() and

used the Python code instead. Leads to PyImport_ExecCodeModuleObject() to not

try to infer the source path from the bytecode path as

PyImport_ExecCodeModuleWithPathnames() does.

Extension Modules

-----------------

- Issue #6493: An issue in ctypes on Windows that caused structure bitfields

of type ctypes.c_uint32 and width 32 to incorrectly be set has been fixed.

- Issue #15194: Update libffi to the 3.0.11 release.

Tools/Demos

-----------

- Issue #15458: python-config gets a new option --configdir to print the $LIBPL

value.

- Move importlib.test.benchmark to Tools/importbench.

- Issue #12605: The gdb hooks for debugging CPython (within Tools/gdb) have been

enhanced to show information on more C frames relevant to CPython within the

"py-bt" and "py-bt-full" commands:

* C frames that are waiting on the GIL

* C frames that are garbage-collecting

* C frames that are due to the invocation of a PyCFunction

Documentation

-------------

- Issue #15444: Use proper spelling for non-ASCII contributor names. Patch

by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15295: Reorganize and rewrite the documentation on the import system.

- Issue #15230: Clearly document some of the limitations of the runpy module and

nudge readers towards importlib when appropriate.

- Issue #15053: Copy Python 3.3 import lock change notice to all relevant

functions in imp instead of just at the top of the relevant section.

- Issue #15288: Link to the term "loader" in notes in pkgutil about how things

won't work as expected in Python 3.3 and mark the requisite functions as

"changed" since they will no longer work with modules directly imported by

import itself.

- Issue #13557: Clarify effect of giving two different namespaces to exec or

execfile().

- Issue #15250: Document that filecmp.dircmp compares files shallowly. Patch

contributed by Chris Jerdonek.

Tests

-----

- Issue #15467: Move helpers for __sizeof__ tests into test_support. Patch by

Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15320: Make iterating the list of tests thread-safe when running tests

in multiprocess mode. Patch by Chris Jerdonek.

- Issue #15168: Move importlib.test to test.test_importlib.

- Issue #15091: Reactivate a test on UNIX which was failing thanks to a

forgotten importlib.invalidate_caches() call.

- Issue #15230: Adopted a more systematic approach in the runpy tests.

- Issue #15300: Ensure the temporary test working directories are in the same

parent folder when running tests in multiprocess mode from a Python build.

Patch by Chris Jerdonek.

- Issue #15284: Skip {send,recv}msg tests in test_socket when IPv6 is not

enabled. Patch by Brian Brazil.

- Issue #15277: Fix a resource leak in support.py when IPv6 is disabled. Patch

by Brian Brazil.

Build

-----

- Issue #11715: Fix multiarch detection without having Debian development tools

(dpkg-dev) installed.

- Issue #15037: Build OS X installers with local copy of ncurses 5.9 libraries

to avoid curses.unget_wch bug present in older versions of ncurses such as

those shipped with OS X.

- Issue #15560: Fix building _sqlite3 extension on OS X with an SDK. Also, for

OS X installers, ensure consistent sqlite3 behavior and feature availability

by building a local copy of libsqlite3 rather than depending on the wide range

of versions supplied with various OS X releases.

- Issue #8847: Disable COMDAT folding in Windows PGO builds.

- Issue #14018: Fix OS X Tcl/Tk framework checking when using OS X SDKs.

- Issue #15431: Add _freeze_importlib project to regenerate importlib.h on

Windows. Patch by Kristján Valur Jónsson.

- Issue #14197: For OS X framework builds, ensure links to the shared library

are created with the proper ABI suffix.

- Issue #14330: For cross builds, don't use host python, use host search paths

for host compiler.

- Issue #15235: Allow Berkley DB versions up to 5.3 to build the dbm module.

- Issue #15268: Search curses.h in /usr/include/ncursesw.

What's New in Python 3.3.0 Beta 1?

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

*Release date: 27-Jun-2012*

Core and Builtins

-----------------

- Fix a (most likely) very rare memory leak when calling main() and not being

able to decode a command-line argument.

- Issue #14815: Use Py_ssize_t instead of long for the object hash, to

preserve all 64 bits of hash on Win64.

- Issue #12268: File readline, readlines and read() or readall() methods

no longer lose data when an underlying read system call is interrupted.

IOError is no longer raised due to a read system call returning EINTR

from within these methods.

- Issue #11626: Add _SizeT functions to stable ABI.

- Issue #15146: Add PyType_FromSpecWithBases. Patch by Robin Schreiber.

- Issue #15142: Fix reference leak when deallocating instances of types

created using PyType_FromSpec().

- Issue #15042: Add PyState_AddModule and PyState_RemoveModule. Add version

guard for Py_LIMITED_API additions. Patch by Robin Schreiber.

- Issue #10053: Don't close FDs when FileIO.__init__ fails. Loosely based on

the work by Hirokazu Yamamoto.

- Issue #15096: Removed support for ur'' as the raw notation isn't

compatible with Python 2.x's raw unicode strings.

- Issue #13783: Generator objects now use the identifier APIs internally

- Issue #14874: Restore charmap decoding speed to pre-PEP 393 levels.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15026: utf-16 encoding is now significantly faster (up to 10x).

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #11022: open() and io.TextIOWrapper are now calling

locale.getpreferredencoding(False) instead of locale.getpreferredencoding()

in text mode if the encoding is not specified. Don't change temporary the

locale encoding using locale.setlocale(), use the current locale encoding

instead of the user preferred encoding.

- Issue #14673: Add Eric Snow's sys.implementation implementation.

- Issue #15038: Optimize python Locks on Windows.

Library

-------

- Issue #9803: Don't close IDLE on saving if breakpoint is open.

Patch by Roger Serwy.

- Issue #12288: Consider '0' and '0.0' as valid initialvalue

for tkinter SimpleDialog.

- Issue #15512: Add a __sizeof__ implementation for parser.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15469: Add a __sizeof__ implementation for deque objects.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15489: Add a __sizeof__ implementation for BytesIO objects.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15487: Add a __sizeof__ implementation for buffered I/O objects.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15514: Correct __sizeof__ support for cpu_set.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15187: Bugfix: remove temporary directories test_shutil was leaving

behind.

- Issue #15177: Added dir_fd parameter to os.fwalk().

- Issue #15176: Clarified behavior, documentation, and implementation

of os.listdir().

- Issue #15061: Re-implemented hmac.compare_digest() in C to prevent further

timing analysis and to support all buffer protocol aware objects as well as

ASCII only str instances safely.

- Issue #15164: Change return value of platform.uname() from a

plain tuple to a collections.namedtuple.

- Support Mageia Linux in the platform module.

- Issue #11678: Support Arch linux in the platform module.

- Issue #15118: Change return value of os.uname() and os.times() from

plain tuples to immutable iterable objects with named attributes

(structseq objects).

- Speed up _decimal by another 10-15% by caching the thread local context

that was last accessed. In the pi benchmark (64-bit platform, prec=9),

_decimal is now only 1.5x slower than float.

- Remove the packaging module, which is not ready for prime time.

- Issue #15154: Add "dir_fd" parameter to os.rmdir, remove "rmdir"

parameter from os.remove / os.unlink.

- Issue #4489: Add a shutil.rmtree that isn't susceptible to symlink attacks.

It is used automatically on platforms supporting the necessary os.openat()

and os.unlinkat() functions. Main code by Martin von Löwis.

- Issue #15156: HTMLParser now uses the new "html.entities.html5" dictionary.

- Issue #11113: add a new "html5" dictionary containing the named character

references defined by the HTML5 standard and the equivalent Unicode

character(s) to the html.entities module.

- Issue #15114: the strict mode of HTMLParser and the HTMLParseError exception

are deprecated now that the parser is able to parse invalid markup.

- Issue #3665: \u and \U escapes are now supported in unicode regular

expressions. Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15153: Added inspect.getgeneratorlocals to simplify white box

testing of generator state updates

- Issue #13062: Added inspect.getclosurevars to simplify testing stateful

closures

- Issue #11024: Fixes and additional tests for Time2Internaldate.

- Issue #14626: Large refactoring of functions / parameters in the os module.

Many functions now support "dir_fd" and "follow_symlinks" parameters;

some also support accepting an open file descriptor in place of of a path

string. Added os.support_* collections as LBYL helpers. Removed many

functions only previously seen in 3.3 alpha releases (often starting with

"f" or "l", or ending with "at"). Originally suggested by Serhiy Storchaka;

implemented by Larry Hastings.

- Issue #15008: Implement PEP 362 "Signature Objects".

Patch by Yury Selivanov.

- Issue: #15138: base64.urlsafe_{en,de}code() are now 3-4x faster.

- Issue #444582: Add shutil.which, for finding programs on the system path.

Original patch by Erik Demaine, with later iterations by Jan Killian

and Brian Curtin.

- Issue #14837: SSL errors now have ``library`` and ``reason`` attributes

describing precisely what happened and in which OpenSSL submodule. The

str() of a SSLError is also enhanced accordingly.

- Issue #9527: datetime.astimezone() method will now supply a class

timezone instance corresponding to the system local timezone when

called with no arguments.

- Issue #14653: email.utils.mktime_tz() no longer relies on system

mktime() when timezone offest is supplied.

- Issue #14684: zlib.compressobj() and zlib.decompressobj() now support the use

of predefined compression dictionaries. Original patch by Sam Rushing.

- Fix GzipFile's handling of filenames given as bytes objects.

- Issue #14772: Return destination values from some shutil functions.

- Issue #15064: Implement context manager protocol for multiprocessing types

- Issue #15101: Make pool finalizer avoid joining current thread.

- Issue #14657: The frozen instance of importlib used for bootstrap is now

also the module imported as importlib._bootstrap.

- Issue #14055: Add __sizeof__ support to _elementtree.

- Issue #15054: A bug in tokenize.tokenize that caused string literals

with 'b' prefixes to be incorrectly tokenized has been fixed.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- Issue #15006: Allow equality comparison between naive and aware

time or datetime objects.

- Issue #14982: Document that pkgutil's iteration functions require the

non-standard iter_modules() method to be defined by an importer (something

the importlib importers do not define).

- Issue #15036: Mailbox no longer throws an error if a flush is done

between operations when removing or changing multiple items in mbox,

MMDF, or Babyl mailboxes.

- Issue #14059: Implement multiprocessing.Barrier.

- Issue #15061: The inappropriately named hmac.secure_compare has been

renamed to hmac.compare_digest, restricted to operating on bytes inputs

only and had its documentation updated to more accurately reflect both its

intent and its limitations

- Issue #13841: Make child processes exit using sys.exit() on Windows.

- Issue #14936: curses_panel was converted to PEP 3121 and PEP 384 API.

Patch by Robin Schreiber.

- Issue #1667546: On platforms supporting tm_zone and tm_gmtoff fields

in struct tm, time.struct_time objects returned by time.gmtime(),

time.localtime() and time.strptime() functions now have tm_zone and

tm_gmtoff attributes. Original patch by Paul Boddie.

- Rename adjusted attribute to adjustable in time.get_clock_info() result.

- Issue #3518: Remove references to non-existent BaseManager.from_address()

method.

- Issue #13857: Added textwrap.indent() function (initial patch by Ezra

Berch)

- Issue #2736: Added datetime.timestamp() method.

- Issue #13854: Make multiprocessing properly handle non-integer

non-string argument to SystemExit.

- Issue #12157: Make pool.map() empty iterables correctly. Initial

patch by mouad.

- Issue #11823: disassembly now shows argument counts on calls with keyword args.

- Issue #14711: os.stat_float_times() has been deprecated.

- LZMAFile now accepts the modes "rb"/"wb"/"ab" as synonyms of "r"/"w"/"a".

- The bz2 and lzma modules now each contain an open() function, allowing

compressed files to readily be opened in text mode as well as binary mode.

- BZ2File.__init__() and LZMAFile.__init__() now accept a file object as their

first argument, rather than requiring a separate "fileobj" argument.

- gzip.open() now accepts file objects as well as filenames.

- Issue #14992: os.makedirs(path, exist_ok=True) would raise an OSError

when the path existed and had the S_ISGID mode bit set when it was

not explicitly asked for. This is no longer an exception as mkdir

cannot control if the OS sets that bit for it or not.

- Issue #14989: Make the CGI enable option to http.server available via command

line.

- Issue #14987: Add a missing import statement to inspect.

- Issue #1079: email.header.decode_header now correctly parses all the examples

in RFC2047. There is a necessary visible behavior change: the leading and/or

trailing whitespace on ASCII parts is now preserved.

- Issue #14969: Better handling of exception chaining in contextlib.ExitStack

- Issue #14962: Update text coloring in IDLE shell window after changing

options. Patch by Roger Serwy.

- Issue #14963: Convert contextlib.ExitStack.__exit__ to use an iterative

algorithm (Patch by Alon Horev)

- Issue #14785: Add sys._debugmallocstats() to help debug low-level memory

allocation issues

- Issue #14443: Ensure that .py files are byte-compiled with the correct Python

executable within bdist_rpm even on older versions of RPM

C-API

-----

- Issue #13783: Inadvertent additions to the public C API in the PEP 380

implementation have either been removed or marked as private interfaces.

Extension Modules

-----------------

- Issue #15000: Support the "unique" x32 architecture in _posixsubprocess.c.

Documentation

-------------

- Issue #15081: Document PyState_FindModule.

Patch by Robin Schreiber.

- Issue #14814: Added first draft of ipaddress module API reference

Tests

-----

- Issue #14769: test_capi now has SkipitemTest, which cleverly checks

for "parity" between PyArg_ParseTuple() and the Python/getargs.c static

function skipitem() for all possible "format units".

- test_nntplib now tolerates being run from behind NNTP gateways that add

"X-Antivirus" headers to articles

- Issue #15043: test_gdb is now skipped entirely if gdb security settings

block loading of the gdb hooks

- Issue #14963: Add test cases for exception handling behaviour

in contextlib.ExitStack (Initial patch by Alon Horev)

Build

-----

- Issue #13590: Improve support for OS X Xcode 4:

* Try to avoid building Python or extension modules with problematic

llvm-gcc compiler.

* Since Xcode 4 removes ppc support, extension module builds now

check for ppc compiler support and automatically remove ppc and

ppc64 archs when not available.

* Since Xcode 4 no longer install SDKs in default locations,

extension module builds now revert to using installed headers

and libs if the SDK used to build the interpreter is not

available.

* Update ./configure to use better defaults for universal builds;

in particular, --enable-universalsdk=yes uses the Xcode default

SDK and --with-universal-archs now defaults to "intel" if ppc

not available.

- Issue #14225: Fix Unicode support for curses (#12567) on OS X

- Issue #14928: Fix importlib bootstrap issues by using a custom executable

(Modules/_freeze_importlib) to build Python/importlib.h.

What's New in Python 3.3.0 Alpha 4?

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

*Release date: 31-May-2012*

Core and Builtins

-----------------

- Issue #14835: Make plistlib output empty arrays & dicts like OS X.

Patch by Sidney San Martín.

- Issue #14744: Use the new _PyUnicodeWriter internal API to speed up

str%args and str.format(args).

- Issue #14930: Make memoryview objects weakrefable.

- Issue #14775: Fix a potential quadratic dict build-up due to the garbage

collector repeatedly trying to untrack dicts.

- Issue #14857: fix regression in references to PEP 3135 implicit __class__

closure variable (Reopens issue #12370)

- Issue #14712 (PEP 405): Virtual environments. Implemented by Vinay Sajip.

- Issue #14660 (PEP 420): Namespace packages. Implemented by Eric Smith.

- Issue #14494: Fix __future__.py and its documentation to note that

absolute imports are the default behavior in 3.0 instead of 2.7.

Patch by Sven Marnach.

- Issue #9260: A finer-grained import lock. Most of the import sequence

now uses per-module locks rather than the global import lock, eliminating

well-known issues with threads and imports.

- Issue #14624: UTF-16 decoding is now 3x to 4x faster on various inputs.

Patch by Serhiy Storchaka.

- asdl_seq and asdl_int_seq are now Py_ssize_t sized.

- Issue #14133 (PEP 415): Implement suppression of __context__ display with an