Abstract

    This document describes the development and release schedule for
    Python 2.4.  The schedule primarily concerns itself with PEP-sized
    items.  Small features may be added up to and including the first
    beta release.  Bugs may be fixed until the final release.

    There will be at least two alpha releases, two beta releases, and
    one release candidate.  The release date was 30th November, 2004.

Release Manager

    Anthony Baxter

    Martin von Lowis is building the Windows installers, Fred the 
    doc packages, Sean the RPMs.

Release Schedule

    July 9: alpha 1 [completed]

    August 5/6: alpha 2 [completed]

    Sept 3: alpha 3 [completed]

    October 15: beta 1 [completed]

    November 3: beta 2 [completed]

    November 18: release candidate 1 [completed]

    November 30: final [completed]

Completed features for 2.4

    PEP 218 Builtin Set Objects.

    PEP 289 Generator expressions.

    PEP 292 Simpler String Substitutions to be implemented as a module.

    PEP 318: Function/method decorator syntax, using @syntax

    PEP 322 Reverse Iteration.

    PEP 327: A Decimal package for fixed precision arithmetic.

    PEP 328: Multi-line Imports

    Encapsulate the decorate-sort-undecorate pattern in a keyword for
    list.sort().

    Added a builtin called sorted() which may be used in expressions.

    The itertools module has two new functions, tee() and groupby().
    
    Add a collections module with a deque() object.

    Add two statistical/reduction functions, nlargest() and nsmallest()
    to the heapq module.

    Python's windows installer now uses MSI

Deferred until 2.5:

    - Deprecate and/or remove the modules listed in PEP 4 (posixfile,
      gopherlib, pre, others)

    - Remove support for platforms as described in PEP 11.

    - Finish implementing the Distutils bdist_dpkg command.  (AMK)

    - Add support for reading shadow passwords (www.python.org/sf/579435)

    - It would be nice if the built-in SSL socket type could be used
      for non-blocking SSL I/O.  Currently packages such as Twisted 
      which implement async servers using SSL have to require third-party
      packages such as pyopenssl.  

    - AST-based compiler: this branch was not completed in time for 
      2.4, but will land on the trunk some time after 2.4 final is 
      out, for inclusion in 2.5.

    - reST is going to be used a lot in Zope3.  Maybe it could become
      a standard library module?  (Since reST's author thinks it's too
      instable, I'm inclined not to do this.)

Ongoing tasks

    The following are ongoing TO-DO items which we should attempt to
    work on without hoping for completion by any particular date.

    - Documentation: complete the distribution and installation
      manuals.

    - Documentation: complete the documentation for new-style
      classes.

    - Look over the Demos/ directory and update where required (Andrew
      Kuchling has done a lot of this)

    - New tests.

    - Fix doc bugs on SF.

    - Remove use of deprecated features in the core.

    - Document deprecated features appropriately.

    - Mark deprecated C APIs with Py_DEPRECATED.

    - Deprecate modules which are unmaintained, or perhaps make a new
      category for modules 'Unmaintained'

    - In general, lots of cleanup so it is easier to move forward.

Open issues

    None at this time.

Carryover features from Python 2.3

    - The import lock could use some redesign.  (SF 683658.)

    - A nicer API to open text files, replacing the ugly (in some
      people's eyes) "U" mode flag.  There's a proposal out there to
      have a new built-in type textfile(filename, mode, encoding).
      (Shouldn't it have a bufsize argument too?)

    - New widgets for Tkinter???

      Has anyone gotten the time for this?  *Are* there any new
      widgets in Tk 8.4?  Note that we've got better Tix support
      already (though not on Windows yet).

    - PEP 304 (Controlling Generation of Bytecode Files by Montanaro)
      seems to have lost steam.

    - For a class defined inside another class, the __name__ should be
      "outer.inner", and pickling should work.  (SF 633930.  I'm no
      longer certain this is easy or even right.)

    - Decide on a clearer deprecation policy (especially for modules)
      and act on it.  For a start, see this message from Neal Norwitz:
      http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2002-April/023165.html
      There seems insufficient interest in moving this further in an
      organized fashion, and it's not particularly important.

    - Provide alternatives for common uses of the types module;
      Skip Montanaro has posted a proto-PEP for this idea:
      http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2002-May/024346.html
      There hasn't been any progress on this, AFAICT.

    - Use pending deprecation for the types and string modules.  This
      requires providing alternatives for the parts that aren't
      covered yet (e.g. string.whitespace and types.TracebackType).
      It seems we can't get consensus on this.

    - PEP 262  Database of Installed Python Packages        Kuchling

      This turns out to be useful for Jack Jansen's Python installer,
      so the database is worth implementing.  Code will go in 
      sandbox/pep262.

    - PEP 269  Pgen Module for Python                       Riehl

      (Some necessary changes are in; the pgen module itself needs to
      mature more.)

    - PEP 266  Optimizing Global Variable/Attribute Access  Montanaro
      PEP 267  Optimized Access to Module Namespaces        Hylton
      PEP 280  Optimizing access to globals                 van Rossum

      These are basically three friendly competing proposals.  Jeremy
      has made a little progress with a new compiler, but it's going
      slowly and the compiler is only the first step.  Maybe we'll be
      able to refactor the compiler in this release.  I'm tempted to
      say we won't hold our breath. 

    - Lazily tracking tuples?
      http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2002-May/023926.html
      http://www.python.org/sf/558745
      Not much enthusiasm I believe.

    - PEP 286  Enhanced Argument Tuples                     von Loewis

      I haven't had the time to review this thoroughly.  It seems a
      deep optimization hack (also makes better correctness guarantees
      though).

    - Make 'as' a keyword.  It has been a pseudo-keyword long enough.
      Too much effort to bother.

Copyright

    This document has been placed in the public domain.