Introduction

    This PEP describes the Python 1.6 release schedule.  The CVS
    revision history of this file contains the definitive historical
    record.

    This release will be produced by BeOpen PythonLabs staff for the
    Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI).

Schedule

    August 1     1.6 beta 1 release (planned).
    August 3     1.6 beta 1 release (actual).
    August 15    1.6 final release (planned).
    September 5  1.6 final release (actual).

Features

    A number of features are required for Python 1.6 in order to
    fulfill the various promises that have been made.  The following
    are required to be fully operational, documented, and forward
    compatible with the plans for Python 2.0:

    * Unicode support: The Unicode object defined for Python 2.0 must
      be provided, including all methods and codec support.

    * SRE: Fredrik Lundh's new regular expression engine will be used
      to provide support for both 8-bit strings and Unicode strings.
      It must pass the regression test used for the pcre-based version
      of the re module.

    * The curses module was in the middle of a transformation to a
      package, so the final form was adopted.

Mechanism

    The release will be created as a branch from the development tree
    rooted at CNRI's close of business on 16 May 2000.  Patches
    required from more recent checkins will be merged in by moving the
    branch tag on individual files whenever possible in order to
    reduce mailing list clutter and avoid divergent and incompatible
    implementations.

    The branch tag is "cnri-16-start".

    Patches and features will be merged to the extent required to pass
    regression tests in effect on 16 May 2000.

    The beta release is tagged "r16b1" in the CVS repository, and the
    final Python 1.6 release is tagged "release16" in the repository.

Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.