python-peps/pep-0320.txt

PEP: 320
Title: Python 2.4 Release Schedule
Version: $Revision$
Author: Barry Warsaw and Raymond Hettinger
Status: Incomplete
Type: Informational
Created: 29-Jul-2003
Python-Version: 2.4
Post-History:

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 is not yet fixed but a
    rough target for the first alpha is July 2004.

      land generator expressions -- first week of May (this PEP seems to 
      be the largest potential source of upheaval, so it should go 
      in well before the alpha release).
      alpha 1 -- second week of July 2004
      alpha 2 -- four weeks later
      beta 1 -- TBD (perhaps August) depending on the number of bugs
      in the alphas.      
      final -- September? This will depend on how the alphas and betas
      go, and might be pushed back if several rounds of bugfixing are needed.
      

Release Manager

    Anthony Baxter


Completed features for 2.4

    PEP 218 Builtin Set Objects
    
    PEP 322 Reverse Iteration

    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().
    


Planned features for 2.4

    PEP 289 Generator expressions.

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

    PEP 318: Function/method decorator syntax

    PEP 327: A Decimal package for fixed precision arithmetic.

    PEP 328: Imports: Multi-line and Absolute/Relative.  (Possibly
    the absolute/relative stuff is too controversial and will be 
    pushed off to 2.4.)

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

    Remove support for platforms as described in PEP 11.
    
    Add a module for statistical and reduction functions:
       stddev, average, nlargest, nsmallest, product, etc.

    Add collections package:
        - deque/queue (suggested by Raymond)
        - BTrees (suggested by Tim)
        - ? bag (only if use cases established)
        - ? heap (with a min/max option flag, a key= option,
            and implemented as a fibonacci heap)

    Possibly add 'diff3' and 'patch' functions to the difflib module.

    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: if this branch can land in the trunk by early 
    May, it can go in.  Otherwise it can wait for a future release.


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.)

    - 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.)

    - Decide on a clearer deprecation policy (especially for modules)
      and act on it.  For a start, see this message from Neil 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.



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