News for 1.5.2b1. Moved news before 1.5.1 to HISTORY.

1 files changed, 258 insertions, 2255 deletions

diff --git a/Misc/NEWS b/Misc/NEWS
index a74ed30..fab221c 100644
--- a/Misc/NEWS
+++ b/Misc/NEWS
@@ -1,8 +1,9 @@
 What's new in this release?
 ===========================
 
-Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.4.  The most
-recent changes are listed first.
+Below is a list of all relevant changes since release 1.5.1.  Older
+changes are in the file HISTORY.  The most recent changes are listed
+first.
 
 A note on attributions: while I have sprinkled some names throughout
 here, I'm grateful to many more people who remain unnamed.  You may
@@ -13,6 +14,261 @@ credit, let me know and I'll add you to the list!
 ======================================================================
 
 
+From 1.5.2a2 to 1.5.2b1
+=======================
+
+Changes to intrinsics
+---------------------
+
+- New extension NotImplementedError, derived from RuntimeError.  Not
+used, but recommended use is for "abstract" methods to raise this.
+
+- The parser will now spit out a warning or error when -t or -tt is
+used for parser input coming from a string, too.
+
+- The code generator now inserts extra SET_LINENO opcodes when
+compiling multi-line argument lists.
+
+- When comparing bound methods, use identity test on the objects, not
+equality test.
+
+New or improved ports
+---------------------
+
+- Chris Herborth has redone his BeOS port; it now works on PowerPC
+(R3/R4) and x86 (R4 only).  Threads work too in this port.
+
+Renaming
+--------
+
+- Thanks to Chris Herborth, the thread primitives now have proper Py*
+names in the source code (they already had those for the linker,
+through some smart macros; but the source still had the old, un-Py
+names).
+
+Configuration/build changes
+---------------------------
+
+- Improved support for FreeBSD/3.
+
+- Check for pthread_detach instead of pthread_create in libc.
+
+- The makesetup script now searches EXECINCLUDEPY before INCLUDEPY.
+
+- Misc/Makefile.pre.in now also looks at Setup.thread and Setup.local.
+Otherwise modules such as thread didn't get incorporated in extensions.
+
+New library modules
+-------------------
+
+- codeop.py is a new module that contains the compile_command()
+function that was previously in code.py.  This is so that JPython can
+provide its own version of this function, while still sharing the
+higher-level classes in code.py.
+
+- turtle.py is a new module for simple turtle graphics.  I'm still
+working on it; let me know if you use this to teach Python to children 
+or other novices without prior programming experience.
+
+Obsoleted library modules
+-------------------------
+
+- poly.py and zmod.py have been moved to Lib/lib-old to emphasize
+their status of obsoleteness.  They don't do a particularly good job
+and don't seem particularly relevant to the Python core.
+
+New tools
+---------
+
+- I've added IDLE: my Integrated DeveLopment Environment for Python.
+Requires Tcl/Tk (and Tkinter).  Works on Windows and Unix (and should
+work on Macintosh, but I haven't been able to test it there; it does
+depend on new features in 1.5.2 and perhaps even new features in
+1.5.2b1, especially the new code module).  This is very much a work in
+progress.  I'd like to hear how people like it compared to PTUI (or
+any other IDE they are familiar with).
+
+- New tools by Barry Warsaw:
+
+  = audiopy: controls the Solaris Audio device
+  = pynche:  The PYthonically Natural Color and Hue Editor
+  = world:   Print mappings between country names and DNS country codes
+
+New demos
+---------
+
+- Demo/scripts/beer.py prints the lyrics to an arithmetic drinking
+song.
+
+- Demo/tkinter/guido/optionmenu.py shows how to do an option menu in
+Tkinter.  (By Fredrik Lundh -- not by me!)
+
+Changes to the library
+----------------------
+
+- compileall.py now avoids recompiling .py files that haven't changed;
+it adds a -f option to force recompilation.
+
+- New version of xmllib.py by Sjoerd Mullender (0.2 with latest
+patches).
+
+- nntplib.py: statparse() no longer lowercases the message-id.
+
+- types.py: use type(__stdin__) for FileType.
+
+- urllib.py: fix translations for filenames with "funny" characters.
+
+- cgi.py: In read_multi, allow a subclass to override the class we
+instantiate when we create a recursive instance, by setting the class
+variable 'FieldStorageClass' to the desired class.  By default, this
+is set to None, in which case we use self.__class__ (as before).
+Also, a patch by Jim Fulton to pass additional arguments to recursive
+calls to the FieldStorage constructor from its read_multi method.
+
+- UserList.py: In __getslice__, use self.__class__ instead of
+UserList.
+
+- In SimpleHTTPServer.py, the server specified in test() should be
+BaseHTTPServer.HTTPServer, in case the request handler should want to
+reference the two attributes added by BaseHTTPServer.server_bind.  (By
+Jeff Rush, for Bobo).  Also open the file in binary mode, so serving
+images from a Windows box might actually work.
+
+- In CGIHTTPServer.py, the list of acceptable formats is -split-
+on spaces but -joined- on commas, resulting in double commas
+in the joined text.  (By Jeff Rush.)
+
+- SocketServer.py, patch by Jeff Bauer: a minor change to declare two
+new threaded versions of Unix Server classes, using the ThreadingMixIn
+class: ThreadingUnixStreamServer, ThreadingUnixDatagramServer.
+
+- bdb.py: fix bomb on deleting a temporary breakpoint: there's no
+method do_delete(); do_clear() was meant.  By Greg Ward.
+
+- getopt.py: accept a non-list sequence for the long options (request
+by Jack Jansen).  Because it might be a common mistake to pass a
+single string, this situation is treated separately.  Also added
+docstrings (copied from the library manual) and removed the (now
+redundant) module comments.
+
+- tempfile.py: improvements to avoid security leaks.
+
+- code.py: moved compile_command() to new module codeop.py.
+
+- pickle.py: support pickle format 1.3 (binary float added).  By Jim
+Fulton. Also get rid of the undocumented obsolete Pickler dump_special
+method.
+
+- uu.py: Move 'import sys' to top of module, as noted by Tim Peters.
+
+- imaplib.py: fix problem with some versions of IMAP4 servers that
+choose to mix the case in their CAPABILITIES response.
+
+- cmp.py: use (f1, f2) as cache key instead of f1 + ' ' + f2.  Noted
+by Fredrik Lundh.
+
+Changes to extension modules
+----------------------------
+
+- More doc strings for several modules were contributed by Chris
+Petrilli: math, cmath, fcntl.
+
+- Fixed a bug in zlibmodule.c that could cause core dumps on
+decompression of rarely occurring input.
+
+- cPickle.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright
+notice.  Also, initialize self->safe_constructors early on to prevent
+crash in early dealloc.
+
+- cStringIO.c: new version from Jim Fulton, with Open Source copyright
+notice.  Also fixed a core dump in cStringIO.c when doing seeks.
+
+- mpzmodule.c: fix signed character usage in mpz.mpz(stringobjecty).
+
+- readline.c: Bernard Herzog pointed out that rl_parse_and_bind
+modifies its argument string (bad function!), so we make a temporary
+copy.
+
+- sunaudiodev.c: Barry Warsaw added more smarts to get the device and
+control pseudo-device, per audio(7I).
+
+Changes to tools
+----------------
+
+- New, improved version of Barry Warsaw's Misc/python-mode.el (editing 
+support for Emacs).
+
+- tabnanny.py: added a -q ('quiet') option to tabnanny, which causes
+only the names of offending files to be printed.
+
+- freeze: when printing missing modules, also print the module they
+were imported from.
+
+- untabify.py: patch by Detlef Lannert to implement -t option
+(set tab size).
+
+Changes to Tkinter
+------------------
+
+- grid_bbox(): support new Tk API: grid bbox ?column row? ?column2
+row2?
+
+- _tkinter.c: RajGopal Srinivasan noted that the latest code (1.5.2a2)
+doesn't work when running in a non-threaded environment.  He added
+some #ifdefs that fix this.
+
+Changes to the Python/C API
+---------------------------
+
+- Bumped API version number to 1008 -- enough things have changed!
+
+- There's a new macro, PyThreadState_GET(), which does the same work
+as PyThreadState_Get() without the overhead of a function call (it
+also avoids the error check).  The two top calling locations of
+PyThreadState_Get() have been changed to use this macro.
+
+- All symbols intended for export from a DLL or shared library are now
+marked as such (with the DL_IMPORT() macro) in the header file that
+declares them.  This was needed for the BeOS port, and should also
+make some other ports easier.  The PC port no longer needs the file
+with exported symbols (PC/python_nt.def).  There's also a DL_EXPORT
+macro which is only used for init methods in extension modules, and
+for Py_Main().
+
+Invisible changes to internals
+------------------------------
+
+- Fixed a bug in new_buffersize() in fileobject.c which could
+return a buffer size that was way too large.
+
+- Use PySys_WriteStderr instead of fprintf in most places.
+
+- dictobject.c: remove dead code discovered by Vladimir Marangozov.
+
+- tupleobject.c: make tuples less hungry -- an extra item was
+allocated but never used.  Tip by Vladimir Marangozov.
+
+- mymath.h: Metrowerks PRO4 finally fixes the hypot snafu.  (Jack
+Jansen)
+
+- import.c: Jim Fulton fixes a reference count bug in
+PyEval_GetGlobals.
+
+- glmodule.c: check in the changed version after running the stubber
+again -- this solves the conflict with curses over the 'clear' entry
+point much nicer.  (Jack Jansen had checked in the changes to cstubs
+eons ago, but I never regenrated glmodule.c :-( )
+
+- frameobject.c: fix reference count bug in PyFrame_New.  Vladimir
+Marangozov.
+
+- stropmodule.c: add a missing DECREF in an error exit.  Submitted by
+Jonathan Giddy.
+
+
+======================================================================
+
+
 From 1.5.2a1 to 1.5.2a2
 =======================
 
@@ -776,2256 +1032,3 @@ etc. are sought).
 
 
 ======================================================================
-
-
-From 1.5 to 1.5.1
-=================
-
-General
--------
-
-- The documentation is now unbundled.  It has also been extensively
-modified (mostly to implement a new and more uniform formatting
-style).  We figure that most people will prefer to download one of the
-preformatted documentation sets (HTML, PostScript or PDF) and that
-only a minority have a need for the LaTeX or FrameMaker sources.  Of
-course, the unbundled documentation sources still released -- just not
-in the same archive file, and perhaps not on the same date.
-
-- All bugs noted on the errors page (and many unnoted) are fixed.  All
-new bugs take their places.
-
-- No longer a core dump when attempting to print (or repr(), or str())
-a list or dictionary that contains an instance of itself; instead, the
-recursive entry is printed as [...] or {...}.  See Py_ReprEnter() and
-Py_ReprLeave() below.  Comparisons of such objects still go beserk,
-since this requires a different kind of fix; fortunately, this is a
-less common scenario in practice.
-
-Syntax change
--------------
-
-- The raise statement can now be used without arguments, to re-raise 
-a previously set exception.  This should be used after catching an
-exception with an except clause only, either in the except clause or
-later in the same function.
-
-Import and module handling
---------------------------
-
-- The implementation of import has changed to use a mutex (when
-threading is supported).  This means that when two threads
-simultaneously import the same module, the import statements are
-serialized.  Recursive imports are not affected.
-
-- Rewrote the finalization code almost completely, to be much more
-careful with the order in which modules are destroyed.  Destructors
-will now generally be able to reference built-in names such as None
-without trouble.
-
-- Case-insensitive platforms such as Mac and Windows require the case
-of a module's filename to match the case of the module name as
-specified in the import statement (see below).
-
-- The code for figuring out the default path now distinguishes between
-files, modules, executable files, and directories.  When expecting a
-module, we also look for the .pyc or .pyo file.
-
-Parser/tokenizer changes
-------------------------
-
-- The tokenizer can now warn you when your source code mixes tabs and
-spaces for indentation in a manner that depends on how much a tab is
-worth in spaces.  Use "python -t" or "python -v" to enable this
-option.  Use "python -tt" to turn the warnings into errors.  (See also
-tabnanny.py and tabpolice.py below.)
-
-- Return unsigned characters from tok_nextc(), so '\377' isn't
-mistaken for an EOF character.
-
-- Fixed two pernicious bugs in the tokenizer that only affected AIX.
-One was actually a general bug that was triggered by AIX's smaller I/O
-buffer size.  The other was a bug in the AIX optimizer's loop
-unrolling code; swapping two statements made the problem go away.
-
-Tools, demos and miscellaneous files
-------------------------------------
-
-- There's a new version of Misc/python-mode.el (the Emacs mode for
-Python) which is much smarter about guessing the indentation style
-used in a particular file.  Lots of other cool features too!
-
-- There are two new tools in Tools/scripts: tabnanny.py and
-tabpolice.py, implementing two different ways of checking whether a
-file uses indentation in a way that is sensitive to the interpretation
-of a tab.  The preferred module is tabnanny.py (by Tim Peters).
-
-- Some new demo programs:
-
-	Demo/tkinter/guido/paint.py -- Dave Mitchell
-	Demo/sockets/unixserver.py -- Piet van Oostrum
-	
-
-- Much better freeze support.  The freeze script can now freeze
-hierarchical module names (with a corresponding change to import.c),
-and has a few extra options (e.g. to suppress freezing specific
-modules).  It also does much more on Windows NT.
-
-- Version 1.0 of the faq wizard is included (only very small changes
-since version 0.9.0).
-
-- New feature for the ftpmirror script: when removing local files
-(i.e., only when -r is used), do a recursive delete.
-
-Configuring and building Python
--------------------------------
-
-- Get rid of the check for -linet -- recent Sequent Dynix systems don't
-need this any more and apparently it screws up their configuration.
-
-- Some changes because gcc on SGI doesn't support '-all'.
-
-- Changed the build rules to use $(LIBRARY) instead of
-  -L.. -lpython$(VERSION)
-since the latter trips up the SunOS 4.1.x linker (sigh).
-
-- Fix the bug where the '# dgux is broken' comment in the Makefile
-tripped over Make on some platforms.
-
-- Changes for AIX: install the python.exp file; properly use
-$(srcdir); the makexp_aix script now removes C++ entries of the form
-Class::method.
-
-- Deleted some Makefile targets only used by the (long obsolete)
-gMakefile hacks.
-
-Extension modules
------------------
-
-- Performance and threading improvements to the socket and bsddb
-modules, by Christopher Lindblad of Infoseek.
-
-- Added operator.__not__ and operator.not_.
-
-- In the thread module, when a thread exits due to an unhandled
-exception, don't store the exception information in sys.last_*; it
-prevents proper calling of destructors of local variables.
-
-- Fixed a number of small bugs in the cPickle module.
-
-- Changed find() and rfind() in the strop module so that
-find("x","",2) returns -1, matching the implementation in string.py.
-
-- In the time module, be more careful with the result of ctime(), and
-test for HAVE_MKTIME before usinmg mktime().
-
-- Doc strings contributed by Mitch Chapman to the termios, pwd, gdbm
-modules.
-
-- Added the LOG_SYSLOG constant to the syslog module, if defined.
-
-Standard library modules
-------------------------
-
-- All standard library modules have been converted to an indentation
-style using either only tabs or only spaces -- never a mixture -- if
-they weren't already consistent according to tabnanny.  This means
-that the new -t option (see above) won't complain about standard
-library modules.
-
-- New standard library modules:
-
-	threading -- GvR and the thread-sig
-		Java style thread objects -- USE THIS!!!
-
-	getpass -- Piers Lauder
-		simple utilities to prompt for a password and to
-		retrieve the current username
-
-	imaplib -- Piers Lauder
-		interface for the IMAP4 protocol
-
-	poplib -- David Ascher, Piers Lauder
-		interface for the POP3 protocol
-
-	smtplib -- Dragon De Monsyne
-		interface for the SMTP protocol
-
-- Some obsolete modules moved to a separate directory (Lib/lib-old)
-which is *not* in the default module search path:
-
-	Para
-	addpack
-	codehack
-	fmt
-	lockfile
-	newdir
-	ni
-	rand
-	tb
-
-- New version of the PCRE code (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions --
-the re module and the supporting pcre extension) by Andrew Kuchling.
-Incompatible new feature in re.sub(): the handling of escapes in the
-replacement string has changed.
-
-- Interface change in the copy module: a __deepcopy__ method is now
-called with the memo dictionary as an argument.
-
-- Feature change in the tokenize module: differentiate between NEWLINE
-token (an official newline) and NL token (a newline that the grammar
-ignores).
-
-- Several bugfixes to the urllib module.  It is now truly thread-safe,
-and several bugs and a portability problem have been fixed.  New
-features, all due to Sjoerd Mullender: When creating a temporary file,
-it gives it an appropriate suffix.  Support the "data:" URL scheme.
-The open() method uses the tempcache.
-
-- New version of the xmllib module (this time with a test suite!) by
-Sjoerd Mullender.
-
-- Added debugging code to the telnetlib module, to be able to trace
-the actual traffic.
-
-- In the rfc822 module, added support for deleting a header (still no
-support for adding headers, though).  Also fixed a bug where an
-illegal address would cause a crash in getrouteaddr(), fixed a
-sign reversal in mktime_tz(), and use the local timezone by default
-(the latter two due to Bill van Melle).
-
-- The normpath() function in the dospath and ntpath modules no longer
-does case normalization -- for that, use the separate function
-normcase() (which always existed); normcase() has been sped up and
-fixed (it was the cause of a crash in Mark Hammond's installer in
-certain locales).
-
-- New command supported by the ftplib module: rmd(); also fixed some
-minor bugs.
-
-- The profile module now uses a different timer function by default -- 
-time.clock() is generally better than os.times().  This makes it work
-better on Windows NT, too.
-
-- The tempfile module now recovers when os.getcwd() raises an
-exception.
-
-- Fixed some bugs in the random module; gauss() was subtly wrong, and
-vonmisesvariate() should return a full circle.  Courtesy Mike Miller,
-Lambert Meertens (gauss()), and Magnus Kessler (vonmisesvariate()).
-
-- Better default seed in the whrandom module, courtesy Andrew Kuchling.
-
-- Fix slow close() in shelve module.
-
-- The Unix mailbox class in the mailbox module is now more robust when
-a line begins with the string "From " but is definitely not the start
-of a new message.  The pattern used can be changed by overriding a
-method or class variable.
-
-- Added a rmtree() function to the copy module.
-
-- Fixed several typos in the pickle module.  Also fixed problems when
-unpickling in restricted execution environments.
-
-- Added docstrings and fixed a typo in the py_compile and compileall
-modules.  At Mark Hammond's repeated request, py_compile now append a
-newline to the source if it needs one.  Both modules support an extra
-parameter to specify the purported source filename (to be used in
-error messages).
-
-- Some performance tweaks by Jeremy Hylton to the gzip module.
-
-- Fixed a bug in the merge order of dictionaries in the ConfigParser
-module.  Courtesy Barry Warsaw.
-
-- In the multifile module, support the optional second parameter to
-seek() when possible.
-
-- Several fixes to the gopherlib module by Lars Marius Garshol.  Also, 
-urlparse now correctly handles Gopher URLs with query strings.
-
-- Fixed a tiny bug in format_exception() in the traceback module.
-Also rewrite tb_lineno() to be compatible with JPython (and not
-disturb the current exception!); by Jim Hugunin.
-
-- The httplib module is more robust when servers send a short response 
--- courtesy Tim O'Malley.
-
-Tkinter and friends
--------------------
-
-- Various typos and bugs fixed.
-
-- New module Tkdnd implements a drag-and-drop protocol (within one
-application only).
-
-- The event_*() widget methods have been restructured slightly -- they
-no longer use the default root.
-
-- The interfaces for the bind*() and unbind() widget methods have been
-redesigned; the bind*() methods now return the name of the Tcl command 
-created for the callback, and this can be passed as a optional
-argument to unbind() in order to delete the command (normally, such
-commands are automatically unbound when the widget is destroyed, but
-for some applications this isn't enough).
-
-- Variable objects now have trace methods to interface to Tcl's
-variable tracing facilities.
-
-- Image objects now have an optional keyword argument, 'master', to
-specify a widget (tree) to which they belong.  The image_names() and
-image_types() calls are now also widget methods.
-
-- There's a new global call, Tkinter.NoDefaultRoot(), which disables
-all use of the default root by the Tkinter library.  This is useful to
-debug applications that are in the process of being converted from
-relying on the default root to explicit specification of the root
-widget.
-
-- The 'exit' command is deleted from the Tcl interpreter, since it
-provided a loophole by which one could (accidentally) exit the Python
-interpreter without invoking any cleanup code.
-
-- Tcl_Finalize() is now registered as a Python low-level exit handle,
-so Tcl will be finalized when Python exits.
-
-The Python/C API
-----------------
-
-- New function PyThreadState_GetDict() returns a per-thread dictionary
-intended for storing thread-local global variables.
-
-- New functions Py_ReprEnter() and Py_ReprLeave() use the per-thread
-dictionary to allow recursive container types to detect recursion in
-their repr(), str() and print implementations.
-
-- New function PyObject_Not(x) calculates (not x) according to Python's 
-standard rules (basically, it negates the outcome PyObject_IsTrue(x).
-
-- New function _PyModule_Clear(), which clears a module's dictionary
-carefully without removing the __builtins__ entry.  This is implied
-when a module object is deallocated (this used to clear the dictionary
-completely).
-
-- New function PyImport_ExecCodeModuleEx(), which extends
-PyImport_ExecCodeModule() by adding an extra parameter to pass it the
-true file.
-
-- New functions Py_GetPythonHome() and Py_SetPythonHome(), intended to
-allow embedded applications to force a different value for PYTHONHOME.
-
-- New global flag Py_FrozenFlag is set when this is a "frozen" Python
-binary; it suppresses warnings about not being able to find the
-standard library directories.
-
-- New global flag Py_TabcheckFlag is incremented by the -t option and
-causes the tokenizer to issue warnings or errors about inconsistent
-mixing of tabs and spaces for indentation.
-
-Miscellaneous minor changes and bug fixes
------------------------------------------
-
-- Improved the error message when an attribute of an attribute-less
-object is requested -- include the name of the attribute and the type
-of the object in the message.
-
-- Sped up int(), long(), float() a bit.
-
-- Fixed a bug in list.sort() that would occasionally dump core.
-
-- Fixed a bug in PyNumber_Power() that caused numeric arrays to fail
-when taken tothe real power.
-
-- Fixed a number of bugs in the file reading code, at least one of
-which could cause a core dump on NT, and one of which would
-occasionally cause file.read() to return less than the full contents
-of the file.
-
-- Performance hack by Vladimir Marangozov for stack frame creation.
-
-- Make sure setvbuf() isn't used unless HAVE_SETVBUF is defined.
-
-Windows 95/NT
--------------
-
-- The .lib files are now part of the distribution; they are collected
-in the subdirectory "libs" of the installation directory.
-
-- The extension modules (.pyd files) are now collected in a separate
-subdirectory of the installation directory named "DLLs".
-
-- The case of a module's filename must now match the case of the
-module name as specified in the import statement.  This is an
-experimental feature -- if it turns out to break in too many
-situations, it will be removed (or disabled by default) in the future.
-It can be disabled on a per-case basis by setting the environment
-variable PYTHONCASEOK (to any value).
-
-
-======================================================================
-
-
-From 1.5b2 to 1.5
-=================
-
-- Newly documentated module: BaseHTTPServer.py, thanks to Greg Stein.
-
-- Added doc strings to string.py, stropmodule.c, structmodule.c,
-thanks to Charles Waldman.
-
-- Many nits fixed in the manuals, thanks to Fred Drake and many others
-(especially Rob Hooft and Andrew Kuchling).  The HTML version now uses
-HTML markup instead of inline GIF images for tables; only two images
-are left (for obsure bits of math).  The index of the HTML version has
-also been much improved.  Finally, it is once again possible to
-generate an Emacs info file from the library manual (but I don't
-commit to supporting this in future versions).
-
-- New module: telnetlib.py (a simple telnet client library).
-
-- New tool: Tools/versioncheck/, by Jack Jansen.
-
-- Ported zlibmodule.c and bsddbmodule.c to NT; The project file for MS
-DevStudio 5.0 now includes new subprojects to build the zlib and bsddb
-extension modules.
-
-- Many small changes again to Tkinter.py -- mostly bugfixes and adding
-missing routines.  Thanks to Greg McFarlane for reporting a bunch of
-problems and proofreading my fixes.
-
-- The re module and its documentation are up to date with the latest
-version released to the string-sig (Dec. 22).
-
-- Stop test_grp.py from failing when the /etc/group file is empty
-(yes, this happens!).
-
-- Fix bug in integer conversion (mystrtoul.c) that caused
-4294967296==0 to be true!
-
-- The VC++ 4.2 project file should be complete again.
-
-- In tempfile.py, use a better template on NT, and add a new optional
-argument "suffix" with default "" to specify a specific extension for
-the temporary filename (needed sometimes on NT but perhaps also handy
-elsewhere).
-
-- Fixed some bugs in the FAQ wizard, and converted it to use re
-instead of regex.
-
-- Fixed a mysteriously undetected error in dlmodule.c (it was using a
-totally bogus routine name to raise an exception).
-
-- Fixed bug in import.c which wasn't using the new "dos-8x3" name yet.
-
-- Hopefully harmless changes to the build process to support shared
-libraries on DG/UX.  This adds a target to create
-libpython$(VERSION).so; however this target is *only* for DG/UX.
-
-- Fixed a bug in the new format string error checking in getargs.c.
-
-- A simple fix for infinite recursion when printing __builtins__:
-reset '_' to None before printing and set it to the printed variable
-*after* printing (and only when printing is successful).
-
-- Fixed lib-tk/SimpleDialog.py to keep the dialog visible even if the
-parent window is not (Skip Montanaro).
-
-- Fixed the two most annoying problems with ftp URLs in
-urllib.urlopen(); an empty file now correctly raises an error, and it
-is no longer required to explicitly close the returned "file" object
-before opening another ftp URL to the same host and directory.
-
-
-======================================================================
-
-
-From 1.5b1 to 1.5b2
-===================
-
-- Fixed a bug in cPickle.c that caused it to crash right away because
-the version string had a different format.
-
-- Changes in pickle.py and cPickle.c: when unpickling an instance of a
-class that doesn't define the __getinitargs__() method, the __init__()
-constructor is no longer called.  This makes a much larger group of
-classes picklable by default, but may occasionally change semantics.
-To force calling __init__() on unpickling, define a __getinitargs__()
-method.  Other changes too, in particular cPickle now handles classes
-defined in packages correctly.  The same change applies to copying
-instances with copy.py.  The cPickle.c changes and some pickle.py
-changes are courtesy Jim Fulton.
-
-- Locale support in he "re" (Perl regular expressions) module.  Use 
-the flag re.L (or re.LOCALE) to enable locale-specific matching
-rules for \w and \b.  The in-line syntax for this flag is (?L).
-
-- The built-in function isinstance(x, y) now also succeeds when y is
-a type object and type(x) is y.
-
-- repr() and str() of class and instance objects now reflect the
-package/module in which the class is defined.
-
-- Module "ni" has been removed.  (If you really need it, it's been
-renamed to "ni1".  Let me know if this causes any problems for you.
-Package authors are encouraged to write __init__.py files that
-support both ni and 1.5 package support, so the same version can be
-used with Python 1.4 as well as 1.5.)
-
-- The thread module is now automatically included when threads are
-configured.  (You must remove it from your existing Setup file,
-since it is now in its own Setup.thread file.)
-
-- New command line option "-x" to skip the first line of the script;
-handy to make executable scripts on non-Unix platforms.
-
-- In importdl.c, add the RTLD_GLOBAL to the dlopen() flags.  I
-haven't checked how this affects things, but it should make symbols
-in one shared library available to the next one.
-
-- The Windows installer now installs in the "Program Files" folder on
-the proper volume by default.
-
-- The Windows configuration adds a new main program, "pythonw", and
-registers a new extension, ".pyw" that invokes this.  This is a
-pstandard Python interpreter that does not pop up a console window;
-handy for pure Tkinter applications.  All output to the original
-stdout and stderr is lost; reading from the original stdin yields
-EOF.  Also, both python.exe and pythonw.exe now have a pretty icon
-(a green snake in a box, courtesy Mark Hammond).
-
-- Lots of improvements to emacs-mode.el again.  See Barry's web page:
-http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html.
-
-- Lots of improvements and additions to the library reference manual;
-many by Fred Drake.
-
-- Doc strings for the following modules: rfc822.py, posixpath.py,
-ntpath.py, httplib.py.  Thanks to Mitch Chapman and Charles Waldman.
-
-- Some more regression testing.
-
-- An optional 4th (maxsplit) argument to strop.replace().
-
-- Fixed handling of maxsplit in string.splitfields().
-
-- Tweaked os.environ so it can be pickled and copied.
-
-- The portability problems caused by indented preprocessor commands
-and C++ style comments should be gone now.
-
-- In random.py, added Pareto and Weibull distributions.
-
-- The crypt module is now disabled in Modules/Setup.in by default; it
-is rarely needed and causes errors on some systems where users often
-don't know how to deal with those.
-
-- Some improvements to the _tkinter build line suggested by Case Roole.
-
-- A full suite of platform specific files for NetBSD 1.x, submitted by 
-Anders Andersen.
-
-- New Solaris specific header STROPTS.py.
-
-- Moved a confusing occurrence of *shared* from the comments in
-Modules/Setup.in (people would enable this one instead of the real
-one, and get disappointing results).
-
-- Changed the default mode for directories to be group-writable when
-the installation process creates them.
-
-- Check for pthread support in "-l_r" for FreeBSD/NetBSD, and support
-shared libraries for both.
-
-- Support FreeBSD and NetBSD in posixfile.py.
-
-- Support for the "event" command, new in Tk 4.2.  By Case Roole.
-
-- Add Tix_SafeInit() support to tkappinit.c.
-
-- Various bugs fixed in "re.py" and "pcre.c".
-
-- Fixed a bug (broken use of the syntax table) in the old "regexpr.c".
-
-- In frozenmain.c, stdin is made unbuffered too when PYTHONUNBUFFERED
-is set.
-
-- Provide default blocksize for retrbinary in ftplib.py (Skip
-Montanaro).
-
-- In NT, pick the username up from different places in user.py (Jeff
-Bauer).
-
-- Patch to urlparse.urljoin() for ".." and "..#1", Marc Lemburg.
-
-- Many small improvements to Jeff Rush' OS/2 support.
-
-- ospath.py is gone; it's been obsolete for so many years now...
-
-- The reference manual is now set up to prepare better HTML (still
-using webmaker, alas).
-
-- Add special handling to /Tools/freeze for Python modules that are
-imported implicitly by the Python runtime: 'site' and 'exceptions'.
-
-- Tools/faqwiz 0.8.3 -- add an option to suppress URL processing
-inside <PRE>, by "Scott".
-
-- Added ConfigParser.py, a generic parser for sectioned configuration
-files.
-
-- In _localemodule.c, LC_MESSAGES is not always defined; put it
-between #ifdefs.
-
-- Typo in resource.c: RUSAGE_CHILDERN -> RUSAGE_CHILDREN.
-
-- Demo/scripts/newslist.py: Fix the way the version number is gotten
-out of the RCS revision.
-
-- PyArg_Parse[Tuple] now explicitly check for bad characters at the
-end of the format string.
-
-- Revamped PC/example_nt to support VC++ 5.x.
-
-- <listobject>.sort() now uses a modified quicksort by Raymund Galvin,
-after studying the GNU libg++ quicksort.  This should be much faster
-if there are lots of duplicates, and otherwise at least as good.
-
-- Added "uue" as an alias for "uuencode" to mimetools.py.  (Hm, the
-uudecode bug where it complaints about trailing garbage is still there 
-:-( ).
-
-- pickle.py requires integers in text mode to be in decimal notation
-(it used to accept octal and hex, even though it would only generate
-decimal numbers).
-
-- In string.atof(), don't fail when the "re" module is unavailable.
-Plug the ensueing security leak by supplying an empty __builtins__
-directory to eval().
-
-- A bunch of small fixes and improvements to Tkinter.py.
-
-- Fixed a buffer overrun in PC/getpathp.c.
-
-
-======================================================================
-
-
-From 1.5a4 to 1.5b1
-===================
-
-- The Windows NT/95 installer now includes full HTML of all manuals.
-It also has a checkbox that lets you decide whether to install the
-interpreter and library.  The WISE installer script for the installer
-is included in the source tree as PC/python15.wse, and so are the
-icons used for Python files.  The config.c file for the Windows build
-is now complete with the pcre module.
-
-- sys.ps1 and sys.ps2 can now arbitrary objects; their str() is
-evaluated for the prompt.
-
-- The reference manual is brought up to date (more or less -- it still
-needs work, e.g. in the area of package import).
-
-- The icons used by latex2html are now included in the Doc
-subdirectory (mostly so that tarring up the HTML files can be fully
-automated).  A simple index.html is also added to Doc (it only works
-after you have successfully run latex2html).
-
-- For all you would-be proselytizers out there: a new version of
-Misc/BLURB describes Python more concisely, and Misc/comparisons
-compares Python to several other languages.  Misc/BLURB.WINDOWS
-contains a blurb specifically aimed at Windows programmers (by Mark
-Hammond).
-
-- A new version of the Python mode for Emacs is included as
-Misc/python-mode.el.  There are too many new features to list here.
-See http://www.python.org/ftp/emacs/pmdetails.html for more info.
-
-- New module fileinput makes iterating over the lines of a list of
-files easier.  (This still needs some more thinking to make it more
-extensible.)
-
-- There's full OS/2 support, courtesy Jeff Rush.  To build the OS/2
-version, see PC/readme.txt and PC/os2vacpp.  This is for IBM's Visual
-Age C++ compiler.  I expect that Jeff will also provide a binary
-release for this platform.
-
-- On Linux, the configure script now uses '-Xlinker -export-dynamic'
-instead of '-rdynamic' to link the main program so that it exports its
-symbols to shared libraries it loads dynamically.  I hope this doesn't
-break on older Linux versions; it is needed for mklinux and appears to
-work on Linux 2.0.30.
-
-- Some Tkinter resstructuring: the geometry methods that apply to a
-master are now properly usable on toplevel master widgets.  There's a
-new (internal) widget class, BaseWidget.  New, longer "official" names
-for the geometry manager methods have been added,
-e.g. "grid_columnconfigure()" instead of "columnconfigure()".  The old
-shorter names still work, and where there's ambiguity, pack wins over
-place wins over grid.  Also, the bind_class method now returns its
-value.
-
-- New, RFC-822 conformant parsing of email addresses and address lists
-in the rfc822 module, courtesy Ben Escoto.
-
-- New, revamped tkappinit.c with support for popular packages (PIL,
-TIX, BLT, TOGL).  For the last three, you need to execute the Tcl
-command "load {} Tix" (or Blt, or Togl) to gain access to them.
-The Modules/Setup line for the _tkinter module has been rewritten
-using the cool line-breaking feature of most Bourne shells.
-
-- New socket method connect_ex() returns the error code from connect()
-instead of raising an exception on errors; this makes the logic
-required for asynchronous connects simpler and more efficient.
-
-- New "locale" module with (still experimental) interface to the
-standard C library locale interface, courtesy Martin von Loewis.  This
-does not repeat my mistake in 1.5a4 of always calling
-setlocale(LC_ALL, "").  In fact, we've pretty much decided that
-Python's standard numerical formatting operations should always use
-the conventions for the C locale; the locale module contains utility
-functions to format numbers according to the user specified locale.
-(All this is accomplished by an explicit call to setlocale(LC_NUMERIC,
-"C") after locale-changing calls.)  See the library manual. (Alas, the
-promised changes to the "re" module for locale support have not been
-materialized yet.  If you care, volunteer!)
-
-- Memory leak plugged in Py_BuildValue when building a dictionary.
-
-- Shared modules can now live inside packages (hierarchical module
-namespaces).  No changes to the shared module itself are needed.
-
-- Improved policy for __builtins__: this is a module in __main__ and a
-dictionary everywhere else.
-
-- Python no longer catches SIGHUP and SIGTERM by default.  This was
-impossible to get right in the light of thread contexts.  If you want
-your program to clean up when a signal happens, use the signal module
-to set up your own signal handler.
-
-- New Python/C API PyNumber_CoerceEx() does not return an exception
-when no coercion is possible.  This is used to fix a problem where
-comparing incompatible numbers for equality would raise an exception
-rather than return false as in Python 1.4 -- it once again will return
-false.
-
-- The errno module is changed again -- the table of error messages
-(errorstr) is removed.  Instead, you can use os.strerror().  This
-removes redundance and a potential locale dependency.
-
-- New module xmllib, to parse XML files.  By Sjoerd Mullender.
-
-- New C API PyOS_AfterFork() is called after fork() in posixmodule.c.
-It resets the signal module's notion of what the current process ID
-and thread are, so that signal handlers will work after (and across)
-calls to os.fork().
-
-- Fixed most occurrences of fatal errors due to missing thread state.
-
-- For vgrind (a flexible source pretty printer) fans, there's a simple
-Python definition in Misc/vgrindefs, courtesy Neale Pickett.
-
-- Fixed memory leak in exec statement.
-
-- The test.pystone module has a new function, pystones(loops=LOOPS),
-which returns a (benchtime, stones) tuple.  The main() function now
-calls this and prints the report.
-
-- Package directories now *require* the presence of an __init__.py (or
-__init__.pyc) file before they are considered as packages.  This is
-done to prevent accidental subdirectories with common names from
-overriding modules with the same name.
-
-- Fixed some strange exceptions in __del__ methods in library modules
-(e.g. urllib).  This happens because the builtin names are already
-deleted by the time __del__ is called.  The solution (a hack, but it
-works) is to set some instance variables to 0 instead of None.
-
-- The table of built-in module initializers is replaced by a pointer
-variable.  This makes it possible to switch to a different table at
-run time, e.g. when a collection of modules is loaded from a shared
-library.  (No example code of how to do this is given, but it is
-possible.)  The table is still there of course, its name prefixed with
-an underscore and used to initialize the pointer.
-
-- The warning about a thread still having a frame now only happens in
-verbose mode.
-
-- Change the signal finialization so that it also resets the signal
-handlers.  After this has been called, our signal handlers are no
-longer active!
-
-- New version of tokenize.py (by Ka-Ping Yee) recognizes raw string
-literals.  There's now also a test fort this module.
-
-- The copy module now also uses __dict__.update(state) instead of
-going through individual attribute assignments, for class instances
-without a __setstate__ method.
-
-- New module reconvert translates old-style (regex module) regular
-expressions to new-style (re module, Perl-style) regular expressions.
-
-- Most modules that used to use the regex module now use the re
-module.  The grep module has a new pgrep() function which uses
-Perl-style regular expressions.
-
-- The (very old, backwards compatibility) regexp.py module has been
-deleted.
-
-- Restricted execution (rexec): added the pcre module (support for the
-re module) to the list of trusted extension modules.
-
-- New version of Jim Fulton's CObject object type, adds
-PyCObject_FromVoidPtrAndDesc() and PyCObject_GetDesc() APIs.
-
-- Some patches to Lee Busby's fpectl mods that accidentally didn't
-make it into 1.5a4.
-
-- In the string module, add an optional 4th argument to count(),
-matching find() etc.
-
-- Patch for the nntplib module by Charles Waldman to add optional user
-and password arguments to NNTP.__init__(), for nntp servers that need
-them.
-
-- The str() function for class objects now returns
-"modulename.classname" instead of returning the same as repr().
-
-- The parsing of \xXX escapes no longer relies on sscanf().
-
-- The "sharedmodules" subdirectory of the installation is renamed to
-"lib-dynload".  (You may have to edit your Modules/Setup file to fix
-this in an existing installation!)
-
-- Fixed Don Beaudry's mess-up with the OPT test in the configure
-script.  Certain SGI platforms will still issue a warning for each
-compile; there's not much I can do about this since the compiler's
-exit status doesn't indicate that I was using an obsolete option.
-
-- Fixed Barry's mess-up with {}.get(), and added test cases for it.
-
-- Shared libraries didn't quite work under AIX because of the change
-in status of the GNU readline interface.  Fix due to by Vladimir
-Marangozov.
-
-
-======================================================================
-
-
-From 1.5a3 to 1.5a4
-===================
-
-- faqwiz.py: version 0.8; Recognize https:// as URL; <html>...</html>
-feature; better install instructions; removed faqmain.py (which was an
-older version).
-
-- nntplib.py: Fixed some bugs reported by Lars Wirzenius (to Debian)
-about the treatment of lines starting with '.'.  Added a minimal test
-function.
-
-- struct module: ignore most whitespace in format strings.
-
-- urllib.py: close the socket and temp file in URLopener.retrieve() so
-that multiple retrievals using the same connection work.
-
-- All standard exceptions are now classes by default; use -X to make
-them strings (for backward compatibility only).
-
-- There's a new standard exception hierarchy, defined in the standard
-library module exceptions.py (which you never need to import
-explicitly).  See
-http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/stdexceptions.html for
-more info.
-
-- Three new C API functions:
-
-  - int PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches(obj1, obj2)
-
-    Returns 1 if obj1 and obj2 are the same object, or if obj1 is an
-    instance of type obj2, or of a class derived from obj2
-
-  - int PyErr_ExceptionMatches(obj)
-
-    Higher level wrapper around PyErr_GivenExceptionMatches() which uses
-    PyErr_Occurred() as obj1.  This will be the more commonly called
-    function.
-
-  - void PyErr_NormalizeException(typeptr, valptr, tbptr)
-
-    Normalizes exceptions, and places the normalized values in the
-    arguments.  If type is not a class, this does nothing.  If type is a
-    class, then it makes sure that value is an instance of the class by:
-
-    1. if instance is of the type, or a class derived from type, it does
-       nothing.
-
-    2. otherwise it instantiates the class, using the value as an
-       argument.  If value is None, it uses an empty arg tuple, and if
-       the value is a tuple, it uses just that.
-
-- Another new C API function: PyErr_NewException() creates a new
-exception class derived from Exception; when -X is given, it creates a
-new string exception.
-
-- core interpreter: remove the distinction between tuple and list
-unpacking; allow an arbitrary sequence on the right hand side of any
-unpack instruction.  (UNPACK_LIST and UNPACK_TUPLE now do the same
-thing, which should really be called UNPACK_SEQUENCE.)
-
-- classes: Allow assignments to an instance's __dict__ or __class__,
-so you can change ivars (including shared ivars -- shock horror) and
-change classes dynamically.  Also make the check on read-only
-attributes of classes less draconic -- only the specials names
-__dict__, __bases__, __name__ and __{get,set,del}attr__ can't be
-assigned.
-
-- Two new built-in functions: issubclass() and isinstance().  Both
-take classes as their second arguments.  The former takes a class as
-the first argument and returns true iff first is second, or is a
-subclass of second.  The latter takes any object as the first argument
-and returns true iff first is an instance of the second, or any
-subclass of second.
-
-- configure: Added configuration tests for presence of alarm(),
-pause(), and getpwent().
-
-- Doc/Makefile: changed latex2html targets.
-
-- classes: Reverse the search order for the Don Beaudry hook so that
-the first class with an applicable hook wins.  Makes more sense.
-
-- Changed the checks made in Py_Initialize() and Py_Finalize().  It is
-now legal to call these more than once.  The first call to
-Py_Initialize() initializes, the first call to Py_Finalize()
-finalizes.  There's also a new API, Py_IsInitalized() which checks
-whether we are already initialized (in case you want to leave things
-as they were).
-
-- Completely disable the declarations for malloc(), realloc() and
-free().  Any 90's C compiler has these in header files, and the tests
-to decide whether to suppress the declarations kept failing on some
-platforms.
-
-- *Before* (instead of after) signalmodule.o is added, remove both
-intrcheck.o and sigcheck.o.  This should get rid of warnings in ar or
-ld on various systems.
-
-- Added reop to PC/config.c
-
-- configure: Decided to use -Aa -D_HPUX_SOURCE on HP-UX platforms.
-Removed outdated HP-UX comments from README.  Added Cray T3E comments.
-
-- Various renames of statically defined functions that had name
-conflicts on some systems, e.g. strndup (GNU libc), join (Cray),
-roundup (sys/types.h).
-
-- urllib.py: Interpret three slashes in file: URL as local file (for
-Netscape on Windows/Mac).
-
-- copy.py: Make sure the objects returned by __getinitargs__() are
-kept alive (in the memo) to avoid a certain kind of nasty crash.  (Not
-easily reproducable because it requires a later call to
-__getinitargs__() to return a tuple that happens to be allocated at
-the same address.)
-
-- Added definition of AR to toplevel Makefile.  Renamed @buildno temp
-file to buildno1.
-
-- Moved Include/assert.h to Parser/assert.h, which seems to be the
-only place where it's needed.
-
-- Tweaked the dictionary lookup code again for some more speed
-(Vladimir Marangozov).
-
-- NT build: Changed the way python15.lib is included in the other
-projects.  Per Mark Hammond's suggestion, add it to the extra libs in
-Settings instead of to the project's source files.
-
-- regrtest.py: Change default verbosity so that there are only three
-levels left: -q, default and -v.  In default mode, the name of each
-test is now printed.  -v is the same as the old -vv.  -q is more quiet
-than the old default mode.
-
-- Removed the old FAQ from the distribution.  You now have to get it
-from the web!
-
-- Removed the PC/make_nt.in file from the distribution; it is no
-longer needed.
-
-- Changed the build sequence so that shared modules are built last.
-This fixes things for AIX and doesn't hurt elsewhere.
-
-- Improved test for GNU MP v1 in mpzmodule.c
-
-- fileobject.c: ftell() on Linux discards all buffered data; changed
-read() code to use lseek() instead to get the same effect
-
-- configure.in, configure, importdl.c: NeXT sharedlib fixes
-
-- tupleobject.c: PyTuple_SetItem asserts refcnt==1
-
-- resource.c: Different strategy regarding whether to declare
-getrusage() and getpagesize() -- #ifdef doesn't work, Linux has
-conflicting decls in its headers.  Choice: only declare the return
-type, not the argument prototype, and not on Linux.
-
-- importdl.c, configure*: set sharedlib extensions properly for NeXT
-
-- configure*, Makefile.in, Modules/Makefile.pre.in: AIX shared libraries
-fixed; moved addition of PURIFY to LINKCC to configure
-
-- reopmodule.c, regexmodule.c, regexpr.c, zlibmodule.c: needed casts
-added to shup up various compilers.
-
-- _tkinter.c: removed buggy mac #ifndef
-
-- Doc: various Mac documentation changes, added docs for 'ic' module
-
-- PC/make_nt.in: deleted
-
-- test_time.py, test_strftime.py: tweaks to catch %Z (which may return
-"")
-
-- test_rotor.py: print b -> print `b`
-
-- Tkinter.py: (tagOrId) -> (tagOrId,)
-
-- Tkinter.py: the Tk class now also has a configure() method and
-friends (they have been moved to the Misc class to accomplish this).
-
-- dict.get(key[, default]) returns dict[key] if it exists, or default
-if it doesn't.  The default defaults to None.  This is quicker for
-some applications than using either has_key() or try:...except
-KeyError:....
-
-- Tools/webchecker/: some small changes to webchecker.py; added
-websucker.py (a simple web site mirroring script).
-
-- Dictionary objects now have a get() method (also in UserDict.py).
-dict.get(key, default) returns dict[key] if it exists and default
-otherwise; default defaults to None.
-
-- Tools/scripts/logmerge.py: print the author, too.
-
-- Changes to import: support for "import a.b.c" is now built in.  See
-http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
-for more info.  Most important deviations from "ni.py": __init__.py is
-executed in the package's namespace instead of as a submodule; and
-there's no support for "__" or "__domain__".  Note that "ni.py" is not
-changed to match this -- it is simply declared obsolete (while at the
-same time, it is documented...:-( ).
-Unfortunately, "ihooks.py" has not been upgraded (but see "knee.py"
-for an example implementation of hierarchical module import written in
-Python).
-
-- More changes to import: the site.py module is now imported by
-default when Python is initialized; use -S to disable it.  The site.py
-module extends the path with several more directories: site-packages
-inside the lib/python1.5/ directory, site-python in the lib/
-directory, and pathnames mentioned in *.pth files found in either of
-those directories.  See
-http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/python/essays/packages.html
-for more info.
-
-- Changes to standard library subdirectory names: those subdirectories
-that are not packages have been renamed with a hypen in their name,
-e.g. lib-tk, lib-stdwin, plat-win, plat-linux2, plat-sunos5, dos-8x3.
-The test suite is now a package -- to run a test, you must now use
-"import test.test_foo".
-
-- A completely new re.py module is provided (thanks to Andrew
-Kuchling, Tim Peters and Jeffrey Ollie) which uses Philip Hazel's
-"pcre" re compiler and engine.  For a while, the "old" re.py (which
-was new in 1.5a3!) will be kept around as re1.py.  The "old" regex
-module and underlying parser and engine are still present -- while
-regex is now officially obsolete, it will probably take several major
-release cycles before it can be removed.
-
-- The posix module now has a strerror() function which translates an
-error code to a string.
-
-- The emacs.py module (which was long obsolete) has been removed.
-
-- The universal makefile Misc/Makefile.pre.in now features an
-"install" target.  By default, installed shared libraries go into
-$exec_prefix/lib/python$VERSION/site-packages/.
-
-- The install-sh script is installed with the other configuration
-specific files (in the config/ subdirectory).
-
-- It turns out whatsound.py and sndhdr.py were identical modules.
-Since there's also an imghdr.py file, I propose to make sndhdr.py the
-official one.  For compatibility, whatsound.py imports * from
-sndhdr.py.
-
-- Class objects have a new attribute, __module__, giving the name of
-the module in which they were declared.  This is useful for pickle and
-for printing the full name of a class exception.
-
-- Many extension modules no longer issue a fatal error when their
-initialization fails; the importing code now checks whether an error
-occurred during module initialization, and correctly propagates the
-exception to the import statement.
-
-- Most extension modules now raise class-based exceptions (except when
--X is used).
-
-- Subtle changes to PyEval_{Save,Restore}Thread(): always swap the
-thread state -- just don't manipulate the lock if it isn't there.
-
-- Fixed a bug in Python/getopt.c that made it do the wrong thing when
-an option was a single '-'.  Thanks to Andrew Kuchling.
-
-- New module mimetypes.py will guess a MIME type from a filename's
-extension.
-
-- Windows: the DLL version is now settable via a resource rather than
-being hardcoded.  This can be used for "branding" a binary Python
-distribution.
-
-- urllib.py is now threadsafe -- it now uses re instead of regex, and
-sys.exc_info() instead of sys.exc_{type,value}.
-
-- Many other library modules that used to use
-sys.exc_{type,value,traceback} are now more thread-safe by virtue of
-using sys.exc_info().
-
-- The functions in popen2 have an optional buffer size parameter.
-Also, the command argument can now be either a string (passed to the
-shell) or a list of arguments (passed directly to execv).
-
-- Alas, the thread support for _tkinter released with 1.5a3 didn't
-work.  It's been rewritten.  The bad news is that it now requires a
-modified version of a file in the standard Tcl distribution, which you
-must compile with a -I option pointing to the standard Tcl source
-tree.  For this reason, the thread support is disabled by default.
-
-- The errno extension module adds two tables: errorcode maps errno
-numbers to errno names (e.g. EINTR), and errorstr maps them to
-message strings.  (The latter is redundant because the new call
-posix.strerror() now does the same, but alla...)  (Marc-Andre Lemburg)
-
-- The readline extension module now provides some interfaces to
-internal readline routines that make it possible to write a completer
-in Python.  An example completer, rlcompleter.py, is provided.
-
-	When completing a simple identifier, it completes keywords,
-	built-ins and globals in __main__; when completing
-	NAME.NAME..., it evaluates (!) the expression up to the last
-	dot and completes its attributes.
-
-	It's very cool to do "import string" type "string.", hit the
-	completion key (twice), and see the list of names defined by
-	the string module!
-
-	Tip: to use the tab key as the completion key, call
-
-	    readline.parse_and_bind("tab: complete")
-
-- The traceback.py module has a new function tb_lineno() by Marc-Andre
-Lemburg which extracts the line number from the linenumber table in
-the code object.  Apparently the traceback object doesn't contains the
-right linenumber when -O is used.  Rather than guessing whether -O is
-on or off, the module itself uses tb_lineno() unconditionally.
-
-- Fixed Demo/tkinter/matt/canvas-moving-or-creating.py: change bind()
-to tag_bind() so it works again.
-
-- The pystone script is now a standard library module.  Example use:
-"import test.pystone; test.pystone.main()".
-
-- The import of the readline module in interactive mode is now also
-attempted when -i is specified.  (Yes, I know, giving in to Marc-Andre
-Lemburg, who asked for this. :-)
-
-- rfc822.py: Entirely rewritten parseaddr() function by Sjoerd
-Mullender, to be closer to the standard.  This fixes the getaddr()
-method.  Unfortunately, getaddrlist() is as broken as ever, since it
-splits on commas without regard for RFC 822 quoting conventions.
-
-- pprint.py: correctly emit trailing "," in singleton tuples.
-
-- _tkinter.c: export names for its type objects, TkappType and
-TkttType.
-
-- pickle.py: use __module__ when defined; fix a particularly hard to
-reproduce bug that confuses the memo when temporary objects are
-returned by custom pickling interfaces; and a semantic change: when
-unpickling the instance variables of an instance, use
-inst.__dict__.update(value) instead of a for loop with setattr() over
-the value.keys().  This is more consistent (the pickling doesn't use
-getattr() either but pickles inst.__dict__) and avoids problems with
-instances that have a __setattr__ hook.  But it *is* a semantic change
-(because the setattr hook is no longer used).  So beware!
-
-- config.h is now installed (at last) in
-$exec_prefix/include/python1.5/.  For most sites, this means that it
-is actually in $prefix/include/python1.5/, with all the other Python
-include files, since $prefix and $exec_prefix are the same by
-default.
-
-- The imp module now supports parts of the functionality to implement
-import of hierarchical module names.  It now supports find_module()
-and load_module() for all types of modules.  Docstrings have been
-added for those functions in the built-in imp module that are still
-relevant (some old interfaces are obsolete).  For a sample
-implementation of hierarchical module import in Python, see the new
-library module knee.py.
-
-- The % operator on string objects now allows arbitrary nested parens
-in a %(...)X style format.  (Brad Howes)
-
-- Reverse the order in which Setup and Setup.local are passed to the
-makesetup script.  This allows variable definitions in Setup.local to
-override definitions in Setup.  (But you'll still have to edit Setup
-if you want to disable modules that are enabled by default, or if such
-modules need non-standard options.)
-
-- Added PyImport_ImportModuleEx(name, globals, locals, fromlist); this
-is like PyImport_ImporModule(name) but receives the globals and locals
-dict and the fromlist arguments as well.  (The name is a char*; the
-others are PyObject*s).
-
-- The 'p' format in the struct extension module alloded to above is
-new in 1.5a4.
-
-- The types.py module now uses try-except in a few places to make it
-more likely that it can be imported in restricted mode.  Some type
-names are undefined in that case, e.g. CodeType (inaccessible),
-FileType (not always accessible), and TracebackType and FrameType
-(inaccessible).
-
-- In urllib.py: added separate administration of temporary files
-created y URLopener.retrieve() so cleanup() can properly remove them.
-The old code removed everything in tempcache which was a bad idea if
-the user had passed a non-temp file into it.  Also, in basejoin(),
-interpret relative paths starting in "../".  This is necessary if the
-server uses symbolic links.
-
-- The Windows build procedure and project files are now based on
-Microsoft Visual C++ 5.x.  The build now takes place in the PCbuild
-directory.  It is much more robust, and properly builds separate Debug
-and Release versions.  (The installer will be added shortly.)
-
-- Added casts and changed some return types in regexpr.c to avoid
-compiler warnings or errors on some platforms.
-
-- The AIX build tools for shared libraries now supports VPATH.  (Donn
-Cave)
-
-- By default, disable the "portable" multimedia modules audioop,
-imageop, and rgbimg, since they don't work on 64-bit platforms.
-
-- Fixed a nasty bug in cStringIO.c when code was actually using the
-close() method (the destructors would try to free certain fields a
-second time).
-
-- For those who think they need it, there's a "user.py" module.  This
-is *not* imported by default, but can be imported to run user-specific
-setup commands, ~/.pythonrc.py.
-
-- Various speedups suggested by Fredrik Lundh, Marc-Andre Lemburg,
-Vladimir Marangozov, and others.
-
-- Added os.altsep; this is '/' on DOS/Windows, and None on systems
-with a sane filename syntax.
-
-- os.py: Write out the dynamic OS choice, to avoid exec statements.
-Adding support for a new OS is now a bit more work, but I bet that
-'dos' or 'nt' will cover most situations...
-
-- The obsolete exception AccessError is now really gone.
-
-- Tools/faqwiz/: New installation instructions show how to maintain
-multiple FAQs.  Removed bootstrap script from end of faqwiz.py module.
-Added instructions to bootstrap script, too.  Version bumped to 0.8.1.
-Added <html>...</html> feature suggested by Skip Montanaro.  Added
-leading text for Roulette, default to 'Hit Reload ...'.  Fix typo in
-default SRCDIR.
-
-- Documentation for the relatively new modules "keyword" and "symbol"
-has been added (to the end of the section on the parser extension
-module).
-
-- In module bisect.py, but functions have two optional argument 'lo'
-and 'hi' which allow you to specify a subsequence of the array to
-operate on.
-
-- In ftplib.py, changed most methods to return their status (even when
-it is always "200 OK") rather than swallowing it.
-
-- main() now calls setlocale(LC_ALL, ""), if setlocale() and
-<locale.h> are defined.
-
-- Changes to configure.in, the configure script, and both
-Makefile.pre.in files, to support SGI's SGI_ABI platform selection
-environment variable.
-
-
-======================================================================
-
-
-From 1.4 to 1.5a3
-=================
-
-Security
---------
-
-- If you are using the setuid script C wrapper (Misc/setuid-prog.c),
-please use the new version.  The old version has a huge security leak.
-
-Miscellaneous
--------------
-
-- Because of various (small) incompatible changes in the Python
-bytecode interpreter, the magic number for .pyc files has changed
-again.
-
-- The default module search path is now much saner.  Both on Unix and
-Windows, it is essentially derived from the path to the executable
-(which can be overridden by setting the environment variable
-$PYTHONHOME).  The value of $PYTHONPATH on Windows is now inserted in
-front of the default path, like in Unix (instead of overriding the
-default path).  On Windows, the directory containing the executable is
-added to the end of the path.
-
-- A new version of python-mode.el for Emacs has been included.  Also,
-a new file ccpy-style.el has been added to configure Emacs cc-mode for
-the preferred style in Python C sources.
-
-- On Unix, when using sys.argv[0] to insert the script directory in
-front of sys.path, expand a symbolic link.  You can now install a
-program in a private directory and have a symbolic link to it in a
-public bin directory, and it will put the private directory in the
-module search path.  Note that the symlink is expanded in sys.path[0]
-but not in sys.argv[0], so you can still tell the name by which you
-were invoked.
-
-- It is now recommended to use ``#!/usr/bin/env python'' instead of
-``#!/usr/local/bin/python'' at the start of executable scripts, except
-for CGI scripts.  It has been determined that the use of /usr/bin/env
-is more portable than that of /usr/local/bin/python -- scripts almost
-never have to be edited when the Python interpreter lives in a
-non-standard place.  Note that this doesn't work for CGI scripts since
-the python executable often doesn't live in the HTTP server's default
-search path.
-
-- The silly -s command line option and the corresponding
-PYTHONSUPPRESS environment variable (and the Py_SuppressPrint global
-flag in the Python/C API) are gone.
-
-- Most problems on 64-bit platforms should now be fixed.  Andrew
-Kuchling helped.  Some uncommon extension modules are still not
-clean (image and audio ops?).
-
-- Fixed a bug where multiple anonymous tuple arguments would be mixed up
-when using the debugger or profiler (reported by Just van Rossum).
-The simplest example is ``def f((a,b),(c,d)): print a,b,c,d''; this
-would print the wrong value when run under the debugger or profiler.
-
-- The hacks that the dictionary implementation used to speed up
-repeated lookups of the same C string were removed; these were a
-source of subtle problems and don't seem to serve much of a purpose
-any longer.
-
-- All traces of support for the long dead access statement have been
-removed from the sources.
-
-- Plugged the two-byte memory leak in the tokenizer when reading an
-interactive EOF.
-
-- There's a -O option to the interpreter that removes SET_LINENO
-instructions and assert statements (see below); it uses and produces
-.pyo files instead of .pyc files.  The speedup is only a few percent
-in most cases.  The line numbers are still available in the .pyo file,
-as a separate table (which is also available in .pyc files).  However,
-the removal of the SET_LINENO instructions means that the debugger
-(pdb) can't set breakpoints on lines in -O mode.  The traceback module
-contains a function to extract a line number from the code object
-referenced in a traceback object.  In the future it should be possible
-to write external bytecode optimizers that create better optimized
-.pyo files, and there should be more control over optimization;
-consider the -O option a "teaser".  Without -O, the assert statement
-actually generates code that first checks __debug__; if this variable
-is false, the assertion is not checked.  __debug__ is a built-in
-variable whose value is initialized to track the -O flag (it's true
-iff -O is not specified).  With -O, no code is generated for assert
-statements, nor for code of the form ``if __debug__: <something>''.
-Sorry, no further constant folding happens.
-
-
-Performance
------------
-
-- It's much faster (almost twice for pystone.py -- see
-Tools/scripts).  See the entry on string interning below.
-
-- Some speedup by using separate free lists for method objects (both
-the C and the Python variety) and for floating point numbers.
-
-- Big speedup by allocating frame objects with a single malloc() call.
-The Python/C API for frames is changed (you shouldn't be using this
-anyway).
-
-- Significant speedup by inlining some common opcodes for common operand 
-types (e.g.  i+i, i-i, and list[i]).  Fredrik Lundh.
-
-- Small speedup by reordering the method tables of some common
-objects (e.g. list.append is now first).
-
-- Big optimization to the read() method of file objects.  A read()
-without arguments now attempts to use fstat to allocate a buffer of
-the right size; for pipes and sockets, it will fall back to doubling
-the buffer size.  While that the improvement is real on all systems,
-it is most dramatic on Windows.
-
-
-Documentation
--------------
-
-- Many new pieces of library documentation were contributed, mostly by
-Andrew Kuchling.  Even cmath is now documented!  There's also a
-chapter of the library manual, "libundoc.tex", which provides a
-listing of all undocumented modules, plus their status (e.g. internal,
-obsolete, or in need of documentation).  Also contributions by Sue
-Williams, Skip Montanaro, and some module authors who succumbed to
-pressure to document their own contributed modules :-).  Note that
-printing the documentation now kills fewer trees -- the margins have
-been reduced.
-
-- I have started documenting the Python/C API. Unfortunately this project 
-hasn't been completed yet.  It will be complete before the final release of 
-Python 1.5, though.  At the moment, it's better to read the LaTeX source 
-than to attempt to run it through LaTeX and print the resulting dvi file.
-
-- The posix module (and hence os.py) now has doc strings!  Thanks to Neil 
-Schemenauer.  I received a few other contributions of doc strings.  In most 
-other places, doc strings are still wishful thinking...
-
-
-Language changes
-----------------
-
-- Private variables with leading double underscore are now a permanent 
-feature of the language.  (These were experimental in release 1.4.  I have 
-favorable experience using them; I can't label them "experimental" 
-forever.)
-
-- There's new string literal syntax for "raw strings".  Prefixing a string 
-literal with the letter r (or R) disables all escape processing in the 
-string; for example, r'\n' is a two-character string consisting of a 
-backslash followed by the letter n.  This combines with all forms of string 
-quotes; it is actually useful for triple quoted doc strings which might 
-contain references to \n or \t.  An embedded quote prefixed with a 
-backslash does not terminate the string, but the backslash is still 
-included in the string; for example, r'\'' is a two-character string 
-consisting of a backslash and a quote.  (Raw strings are also 
-affectionately known as Robin strings, after their inventor, Robin 
-Friedrich.)
-
-- There's a simple assert statement, and a new exception
-AssertionError.  For example, ``assert foo > 0'' is equivalent to ``if
-not foo > 0: raise AssertionError''.  Sorry, the text of the asserted
-condition is not available; it would be too complicated to generate
-code for this (since the code is generated from a parse tree).
-However, the text is displayed as part of the traceback!
-
-- The raise statement has a new feature: when using "raise SomeClass,
-somevalue" where somevalue is not an instance of SomeClass, it
-instantiates SomeClass(somevalue).  In 1.5a4, if somevalue is an
-instance of a *derived* class of SomeClass, the exception class raised
-is set to somevalue.__class__, and SomeClass is ignored after that.
-
-- Duplicate keyword arguments are now detected at compile time;
-f(a=1,a=2) is now a syntax error.
-
-
-Changes to builtin features
----------------------------
-
-- There's a new exception FloatingPointError (used only by Lee Busby's
-patches to catch floating point exceptions, at the moment).
-
-- The obsolete exception ConflictError (presumably used by the long
-obsolete access statement) has been deleted.
-
-- There's a new function sys.exc_info() which returns the tuple 
-(sys.exc_type, sys.exc_value, sys.exc_traceback) in a thread-safe way.
-
-- There's a new variable sys.executable, pointing to the executable file 
-for the Python interpreter.
-
-- The sort() methods for lists no longer uses the C library qsort(); I
-wrote my own quicksort implementation, with lots of help (in the form
-of a kind of competition) from Tim Peters.  This solves a bug in
-dictionary comparisons on some Solaris versions when Python is built
-with threads, and makes sorting lists even faster.
-
-- The semantics of comparing two dictionaries have changed, to make
-comparison of unequal dictionaries faster.  A shorter dictionary is
-always considered smaller than a larger dictionary.  For dictionaries
-of the same size, the smallest differing element determines the
-outcome (which yields the same results as before in this case, without
-explicit sorting).  Thanks to Aaron Watters for suggesting something
-like this.
-
-- The semantics of try-except have changed subtly so that calling a
-function in an exception handler that itself raises and catches an
-exception no longer overwrites the sys.exc_* variables.  This also
-alleviates the problem that objects referenced in a stack frame that
-caught an exception are kept alive until another exception is caught
--- the sys.exc_* variables are restored to their previous value when
-returning from a function that caught an exception.
-
-- There's a new "buffer" interface.  Certain objects (e.g. strings and
-arrays) now support the "buffer" protocol.  Buffer objects are acceptable 
-whenever formerly a string was required for a write operation; mutable 
-buffer objects can be the target of a read operation using the call
-f.readinto(buffer).  A cool feature is that regular expression matching now 
-also work on array objects.  Contribution by Jack Jansen.  (Needs 
-documentation.)
-
-- String interning: dictionary lookups are faster when the lookup
-string object is the same object as the key in the dictionary, not
-just a string with the same value.  This is done by having a pool of
-"interned" strings.  Most names generated by the interpreter are now
-automatically interned, and there's a new built-in function intern(s)
-that returns the interned version of a string.  Interned strings are
-not a different object type, and interning is totally optional, but by
-interning most keys a speedup of about 15% was obtained for the
-pystone benchmark.
-
-- Dictionary objects have several new methods; clear() and copy() have
-the obvious semantics, while update(d) merges the contents of another
-dictionary d into this one, overriding existing keys.  The dictionary
-implementation file is now called dictobject.c rather than the
-confusing mappingobject.c.
-
-- The intrinsic function dir() is much smarter; it looks in __dict__,
-__members__ and __methods__.
-
-- The intrinsic functions int(), long() and float() can now take a
-string argument and then do the same thing as string.atoi(),
-string.atol(), and string.atof().  No second 'base' argument is
-allowed, and complex() does not take a string (nobody cared enough).
-
-- When a module is deleted, its globals are now deleted in two phases.
-In the first phase, all variables whose name begins with exactly one
-underscore are replaced by None; in the second phase, all variables
-are deleted.  This makes it possible to have global objects whose
-destructors depend on other globals.  The deletion order within each
-phase is still random.
-
-- It is no longer an error for a function to be called without a
-global variable __builtins__ -- an empty directory will be provided
-by default.
-
-- Guido's corollary to the "Don Beaudry hook": it is now possible to
-do metaprogramming by using an instance as a base class.  Not for the
-faint of heart; and undocumented as yet, but basically if a base class
-is an instance, its class will be instantiated to create the new
-class.  Jim Fulton will love it -- it also works with instances of his
-"extension classes", since it is triggered by the presence of a
-__class__ attribute on the purported base class.  See
-Demo/metaclasses/index.html for an explanation and see that directory
-for examples.
-
-- Another change is that the Don Beaudry hook is now invoked when
-*any* base class is special.  (Up to 1.5a3, the *last* special base
-class is used; in 1.5a4, the more rational choice of the *first*
-special base class is used.)
-
-- New optional parameter to the readlines() method of file objects.
-This indicates the number of bytes to read (the actual number of bytes
-read will be somewhat larger due to buffering reading until the end of
-the line).  Some optimizations have also been made to speed it up (but
-not as much as read()).
-
-- Complex numbers no longer have the ".conj" pseudo attribute; use
-z.conjugate() instead, or complex(z.real, -z.imag).  Complex numbers
-now *do* support the __members__ and __methods__ special attributes.
-
-- The complex() function now looks for a __complex__() method on class
-instances before giving up.
-
-- Long integers now support arbitrary shift counts, so you can now
-write 1L<<1000000, memory permitting.  (Python 1.4 reports "outrageous
-shift count for this.)
-
-- The hex() and oct() functions have been changed so that for regular
-integers, they never emit a minus sign.  For example, on a 32-bit
-machine, oct(-1) now returns '037777777777' and hex(-1) returns
-'0xffffffff'.  While this may seem inconsistent, it is much more
-useful.  (For long integers, a minus sign is used as before, to fit
-the result in memory :-)
-
-- The hash() function computes better hashes for several data types,
-including strings, floating point numbers, and complex numbers.
-
-
-New extension modules
----------------------
-
-- New extension modules cStringIO.c and cPickle.c, written by Jim
-Fulton and other folks at Digital Creations.  These are much more
-efficient than their Python counterparts StringIO.py and pickle.py,
-but don't support subclassing.  cPickle.c clocks up to 1000 times
-faster than pickle.py; cStringIO.c's improvement is less dramatic but
-still significant.
-
-- New extension module zlibmodule.c, interfacing to the free zlib
-library (gzip compatible compression).  There's also a module gzip.py
-which provides a higher level interface.  Written by Andrew Kuchling
-and Jeremy Hylton.
-
-- New module readline; see the "miscellaneous" section above.
-
-- New Unix extension module resource.c, by Jeremy Hylton, provides
-access to getrlimit(), getrusage(), setrusage(), getpagesize(), and
-related symbolic constants.
-
-- New extension puremodule.c, by Barry Warsaw, which interfaces to the
-Purify(TM) C API.  See also the file Misc/PURIFY.README.  It is also
-possible to enable Purify by simply setting the PURIFY Makefile
-variable in the Modules/Setup file.
-
-
-Changes in extension modules
-----------------------------
-
-- The struct extension module has several new features to control byte
-order and word size.  It supports reading and writing IEEE floats even
-on platforms where this is not the native format.  It uses uppercase
-format codes for unsigned integers of various sizes (always using
-Python long ints for 'I' and 'L'), 's' with a size prefix for strings,
-and 'p' for "Pascal strings" (with a leading length byte, included in
-the size; blame Hannu Krosing; new in 1.5a4).  A prefix '>' forces
-big-endian data and '<' forces little-endian data; these also select
-standard data sizes and disable automatic alignment (use pad bytes as
-needed).
-
-- The array module supports uppercase format codes for unsigned data
-formats (like the struct module).
-
-- The fcntl extension module now exports the needed symbolic
-constants.  (Formerly these were in FCNTL.py which was not available
-or correct for all platforms.)
-
-- The extension modules dbm, gdbm and bsddb now check that the
-database is still open before making any new calls.
-
-- The dbhash module is no more.  Use bsddb instead.  (There's a third
-party interface for the BSD 2.x code somewhere on the web; support for
-bsddb will be deprecated.)
-
-- The gdbm module now supports a sync() method.
-
-- The socket module now has some new functions: getprotobyname(), and
-the set {ntoh,hton}{s,l}().
-
-- Various modules now export their type object: socket.SocketType,
-array.ArrayType.
-
-- The socket module's accept() method now returns unknown addresses as
-a tuple rather than raising an exception.  (This can happen in
-promiscuous mode.)  Theres' also a new function getprotobyname().
-
-- The pthread support for the thread module now works on most platforms.
-
-- STDWIN is now officially obsolete.  Support for it will eventually
-be removed from the distribution.
-
-- The binascii extension module is now hopefully fully debugged.
-(XXX Oops -- Fredrik Lundh promised me a uuencode fix that I never
-received.)
-
-- audioop.c: added a ratecv() function; better handling of overflow in
-add().
-
-- posixmodule.c: now exports the O_* flags (O_APPEND etc.).  On
-Windows, also O_TEXT and O_BINARY.  The 'error' variable (the
-exception is raises) is renamed -- its string value is now "os.error",
-so newbies don't believe they have to import posix (or nt) to catch
-it when they see os.error reported as posix.error.  The execve()
-function now accepts any mapping object for the environment.
-
-- A new version of the al (audio library) module for SGI was
-contributed by Sjoerd Mullender.
-
-- The regex module has a new function get_syntax() which retrieves the
-syntax setting set by set_syntax().  The code was also sanitized,
-removing worries about unclean error handling.  See also below for its
-successor, re.py.
-
-- The "new" module (which creates new objects of various types) once
-again has a fully functioning new.function() method.  Dangerous as
-ever!  Also, new.code() has several new arguments.
-
-- A problem has been fixed in the rotor module: on systems with signed
-characters, rotor-encoded data was not portable when the key contained
-8-bit characters.  Also, setkey() now requires its argument rather
-than having broken code to default it.
-
-- The sys.builtin_module_names variable is now a tuple.  Another new
-variables in sys is sys.executable (the full path to the Python
-binary, if known).
-
-- The specs for time.strftime() have undergone some revisions.  It
-appears that not all format characters are supported in the same way
-on all platforms.  Rather than reimplement it, we note these
-differences in the documentation, and emphasize the shared set of
-features.  There's also a thorough test set (that occasionally finds
-problems in the C library implementation, e.g. on some Linuxes),
-thanks to Skip Montanaro.
-
-- The nis module seems broken when used with NIS+; unfortunately
-nobody knows how to fix it.  It should still work with old NIS.
-
-
-New library modules
--------------------
-
-- New (still experimental) Perl-style regular expression module,
-re.py, which uses a new interface for matching as well as a new
-syntax; the new interface avoids the thread-unsafety of the regex
-interface.  This comes with a helper extension reopmodule.c and vastly
-rewritten regexpr.c.  Most work on this was done by Jeffrey Ollie, Tim
-Peters, and Andrew Kuchling.  See the documentation libre.tex.  In
-1.5, the old regex module is still fully supported; in the future, it
-will become obsolete.
-
-- New module gzip.py; see zlib above.
-
-- New module keyword.py exports knowledge about Python's built-in
-keywords.  (New version by Ka-Ping Yee.)
-
-- New module pprint.py (with documentation) which supports
-pretty-printing of lists, tuples, & dictionaries recursively.  By Fred
-Drake.
-
-- New module code.py.  The function code.compile_command() can
-determine whether an interactively entered command is complete or not,
-distinguishing incomplete from invalid input.  (XXX Unfortunately,
-this seems broken at this moment, and I don't have the time to fix
-it.  It's probably better to add an explicit interface to the parser
-for this.)
-
-- There is now a library module xdrlib.py which can read and write the
-XDR data format as used by Sun RPC, for example.  It uses the struct
-module.
-
-
-Changes in library modules
---------------------------
-
-- Module codehack.py is now completely obsolete.
-
-- The pickle.py module has been updated to make it compatible with the
-new binary format that cPickle.c produces.  By default it produces the
-old all-ASCII format compatible with the old pickle.py, still much
-faster than pickle.py; it will read both formats automatically.  A few
-other updates have been made.
-
-- A new helper module, copy_reg.py, is provided to register extensions
-to the pickling code.
-
-- Revamped module tokenize.py is much more accurate and has an
-interface that makes it a breeze to write code to colorize Python
-source code.  Contributed by Ka-Ping Yee.
-
-- In ihooks.py, ModuleLoader.load_module() now closes the file under
-all circumstances.
-
-- The tempfile.py module has a new class, TemporaryFile, which creates
-an open temporary file that will be deleted automatically when
-closed.  This works on Windows and MacOS as well as on Unix.  (Jim
-Fulton.)
-
-- Changes to the cgi.py module: Most imports are now done at the
-top of the module, which provides a speedup when using ni (Jim
-Fulton).  The problem with file upload to a Windows platform is solved
-by using the new tempfile.TemporaryFile class; temporary files are now
-always opened in binary mode (Jim Fulton).  The cgi.escape() function
-now takes an optional flag argument that quotes '"' to '&quot;'.  It
-is now possible to invoke cgi.py from a command line script, to test
-cgi scripts more easily outside an http server.  There's an optional
-limit to the size of uploads to POST (Skip Montanaro).  Added a
-'strict_parsing' option to all parsing functions (Jim Fulton).  The
-function parse_qs() now uses urllib.unquote() on the name as well as
-the value of fields (Clarence Gardner).  The FieldStorage class now
-has a __len__() method.
-
-- httplib.py: the socket object is no longer closed; all HTTP/1.*
-responses are now accepted; and it is now thread-safe (by not using
-the regex module).
-
-- BaseHTTPModule.py: treat all HTTP/1.* versions the same.
-
-- The popen2.py module is now rewritten using a class, which makes
-access to the standard error stream and the process id of the
-subprocess possible.
-
-- Added timezone support to the rfc822.py module, in the form of a
-getdate_tz() method and a parsedate_tz() function; also a mktime_tz().
-Also added recognition of some non-standard date formats, by Lars
-Wirzenius, and RFC 850 dates (Chris Lawrence).
-
-- mhlib.py: various enhancements, including almost compatible parsing
-of message sequence specifiers without invoking a subprocess.  Also
-added a createmessage() method by Lars Wirzenius.
-
-- The StringIO.StringIO class now supports readline(nbytes).  (Lars 
-Wirzenius.)  (Of course, you should be using cStringIO for performance.)
-
-- UserDict.py supports the new dictionary methods as well.
-
-- Improvements for whrandom.py by Tim Peters: use 32-bit arithmetic to
-speed it up, and replace 0 seed values by 1 to avoid degeneration.
-A bug was fixed in the test for invalid arguments.
-
-- Module ftplib.py: added support for parsing a .netrc file (Fred
-Drake).  Also added an ntransfercmd() method to the FTP class, which
-allows access to the expected size of a transfer when available, and a
-parse150() function to the module which parses the corresponding 150
-response.
-
-- urllib.py: the ftp cache is now limited to 10 entries.  Added
-quote_plus() and unquote_plus() functions which are like quote() and
-unquote() but also replace spaces with '+' or vice versa, for
-encoding/decoding CGI form arguments.  Catch all errors from the ftp
-module.  HTTP requests now add the Host: header line.  The proxy
-variable names are now mapped to lower case, for Windows.  The
-spliturl() function no longer erroneously throws away all data past
-the first newline.  The basejoin() function now intereprets "../"
-correctly.  I *believe* that the problems with "exception raised in
-__del__" under certain circumstances have been fixed (mostly by
-changes elsewher in the interpreter).
-
-- In urlparse.py, there is a cache for results in urlparse.urlparse();
-its size limit is set to 20.  Also, new URL schemes shttp, https, and
-snews are "supported".
-
-- shelve.py: use cPickle and cStringIO when available.  Also added
-a sync() method, which calls the database's sync() method if there is
-one.
-
-- The mimetools.py module now uses the available Python modules for
-decoding quoted-printable, uuencode and base64 formats, rather than
-creating a subprocess.
-
-- The python debugger (pdb.py, and its base class bdb.py) now support
-conditional breakpoints.  See the docs.
-
-- The modules base64.py, uu.py and quopri.py can now be used as simple
-command line utilities.
-
-- Various small fixes to the nntplib.py module that I can't bother to
-document in detail.
-
-- Sjoerd Mullender's mimify.py module now supports base64 encoding and 
-includes functions to handle the funny encoding you sometimes see in mail 
-headers.  It is now documented.
-
-- mailbox.py: Added BabylMailbox.  Improved the way the mailbox is
-gotten from the environment.
-
-- Many more modules now correctly open files in binary mode when this
-is necessary on non-Unix platforms.
-
-- The copying functions in the undocumented module shutil.py are
-smarter.
-
-- The Writer classes in the formatter.py module now have a flush()
-method.
-
-- The sgmllib.py module accepts hyphens and periods in the middle of
-attribute names.  While this is against the SGML standard, there is
-some HTML out there that uses this...
-
-- The interface for the Python bytecode disassembler module, dis.py,
-has been enhanced quite a bit.  There's now one main function,
-dis.dis(), which takes almost any kind of object (function, module,
-class, instance, method, code object) and disassembles it; without
-arguments it disassembles the last frame of the last traceback.  The
-other functions have changed slightly, too.
-
-- The imghdr.py module recognizes new image types: BMP, PNG.
-
-- The string.py module has a new function replace(str, old, new,
-[maxsplit]) which does substring replacements.  It is actually
-implemented in C in the strop module.  The functions [r]find() an
-[r]index() have an optional 4th argument indicating the end of the
-substring to search, alsoo implemented by their strop counterparts.
-(Remember, never import strop -- import string uses strop when
-available with zero overhead.)
-
-- The string.join() function now accepts any sequence argument, not
-just lists and tuples.
-
-- The string.maketrans() requires its first two arguments to be
-present.  The old version didn't require them, but there's not much
-point without them, and the documentation suggests that they are
-required, so we fixed the code to match the documentation.
-
-- The regsub.py module has a function clear_cache(), which clears its
-internal cache of compiled regular expressions.  Also, the cache now
-takes the current syntax setting into account.  (However, this module
-is now obsolete -- use the sub() or subn() functions or methods in the
-re module.)
-
-- The undocumented module Complex.py has been removed, now that Python
-has built-in complex numbers.  A similar module remains as
-Demo/classes/Complex.py, as an example.
-
-
-Changes to the build process
-----------------------------
-
-- The way GNU readline is configured is totally different.  The
---with-readline configure option is gone.  It is now an extension
-module, which may be loaded dynamically.  You must enable it (and
-specify the correct linraries to link with) in the Modules/Setup file.
-Importing the module installs some hooks which enable command line
-editing.  When the interpreter shell is invoked interactively, it
-attempts to import the readline module; when this fails, the default
-input mechanism is used.  The hook variables are PyOS_InputHook and
-PyOS_ReadlineFunctionPointer.  (Code contributed by Lee Busby, with
-ideas from William Magro.)
-
-- New build procedure: a single library, libpython1.5.a, is now built,
-which contains absolutely everything except for a one-line main()
-program (which calls Py_Main(argc, argv) to start the interpreter
-shell).  This makes life much simpler for applications that need to
-embed Python.  The serial number of the build is now included in the
-version string (sys.version).
-
-- As far as I can tell, neither gcc -Wall nor the Microsoft compiler
-emits a single warning any more when compiling Python.
-
-- A number of new Makefile variables have been added for special
-situations, e.g. LDLAST is appended to the link command.  These are
-used by editing the Makefile or passing them on the make command
-line.
-
-- A set of patches from Lee Busby has been integrated that make it
-possible to catch floating point exceptions.  Use the configure option
---with-fpectl to enable the patches; the extension modules fpectl and
-fpetest provide control to enable/disable and test the feature,
-respectively.
-
-- The support for shared libraries under AIX is now simpler and more
-robust.  Thanks to Vladimir Marangozov for revamping his own patches!
-
-- The Modules/makesetup script now reads a file Setup.local as well as
-a file Setup.  Most changes to the Setup script can be done by editing
-Setup.local instead, which makes it easier to carry a particular setup
-over from one release to the next.
-
-- The Modules/makesetup script now copies any "include" lines it
-encounters verbatim into the output Makefile.  It also recognizes .cxx
-and .cpp as C++ source files.
-
-- The configure script is smarter about C compiler options; e.g. with
-gcc it uses -O2 and -g when possible, and on some other platforms it
-uses -Olimit 1500 to avoid a warning from the optimizer about the main
-loop in ceval.c (which has more than 1000 basic blocks).
-
-- The configure script now detects whether malloc(0) returns a NULL
-pointer or a valid block (of length zero).  This avoids the nonsense
-of always adding one byte to all malloc() arguments on most platforms.
-
-- The configure script has a new option, --with-dec-threads, to enable
-DEC threads on DEC Alpha platforms.  Also, --with-threads is now an
-alias for --with-thread (this was the Most Common Typo in configure
-arguments).
-
-- Many changes in Doc/Makefile; amongst others, latex2html is now used
-to generate HTML from all latex documents.
-
-
-Change to the Python/C API
---------------------------
-
-- Because some interfaces have changed, the PYTHON_API macro has been
-bumped.  Most extensions built for the old API version will still run,
-but I can't guarantee this.  Python prints a warning message on
-version mismatches; it dumps core when the version mismatch causes a
-serious problem :-)
-
-- I've completed the Grand Renaming, with the help of Roger Masse and
-Barry Warsaw.  This makes reading or debugging the code much easier.
-Many other unrelated code reorganizations have also been carried out.
-The allobjects.h header file is gone; instead, you would have to
-include Python.h followed by rename2.h.  But you're better off running
-Tools/scripts/fixcid.py -s Misc/RENAME on your source, so you can omit
-the rename2.h; it will disappear in the next release.
-
-- Various and sundry small bugs in the "abstract" interfaces have been
-fixed.  Thanks to all the (involuntary) testers of the Python 1.4
-version!  Some new functions have been added, e.g. PySequence_List(o),
-equivalent to list(o) in Python.
-
-- New API functions PyLong_FromUnsignedLong() and
-PyLong_AsUnsignedLong().
-
-- The API functions in the file cgensupport.c are no longer
-supported.  This file has been moved to Modules and is only ever
-compiled when the SGI specific 'gl' module is built.
-
-- PyObject_Compare() can now raise an exception.  Check with
-PyErr_Occurred().  The comparison function in an object type may also
-raise an exception.
-
-- The slice interface uses an upper bound of INT_MAX when no explicit
-upper bound is given (e.x. for a[1:]).  It used to ask the object for
-its length and do the calculations.
-
-- Support for multiple independent interpreters.  See Doc/api.tex,
-functions Py_NewInterpreter() and Py_EndInterpreter().  Since the
-documentation is incomplete, also see the new Demo/pysvr example
-(which shows how to use these in a threaded application) and the
-source code.
-
-- There is now a Py_Finalize() function which "de-initializes"
-Python.  It is possible to completely restart the interpreter
-repeatedly by calling Py_Finalize() followed by Py_Initialize().  A
-change of functionality in Py_Initialize() means that it is now a
-fatal error to call it while the interpreter is already initialized.
-The old, half-hearted Py_Cleanup() routine is gone.  Use of Py_Exit()
-is deprecated (it is nothing more than Py_Finalize() followed by
-exit()).
-
-- There are no known memory leaks left.  While Py_Finalize() doesn't
-free *all* allocated memory (some of it is hard to track down),
-repeated calls to Py_Finalize() and Py_Initialize() do not create
-unaccessible heap blocks.
-
-- There is now explicit per-thread state.  (Inspired by, but not the
-same as, Greg Stein's free threading patches.)
-
-- There is now better support for threading C applications.  There are
-now explicit APIs to manipulate the interpreter lock.  Read the source
-or the Demo/pysvr example; the new functions are
-PyEval_{Acquire,Release}{Lock,Thread}().
-
-- The test macro DEBUG has changed to Py_DEBUG, to avoid interference
-with other libraries' DEBUG macros.  Likewise for any other test
-macros that didn't yet start with Py_.
-
-- New wrappers around malloc() and friends: Py_Malloc() etc. call
-malloc() and call PyErr_NoMemory() when it fails; PyMem_Malloc() call
-just malloc().  Use of these wrappers could be essential if multiple
-memory allocators exist (e.g. when using certain DLL setups under
-Windows).  (Idea by Jim Fulton.)
-
-- New C API PyImport_Import() which uses whatever __import__() hook
-that is installed for the current execution environment.  By Jim
-Fulton.
-
-- It is now possible for an extension module's init function to fail
-non-fatally, by calling one of the PyErr_* functions and returning.
-
-- The PyInt_AS_LONG() and PyFloat_AS_DOUBLE() macros now cast their
-argument to the proper type, like the similar PyString macros already
-did.  (Suggestion by Marc-Andre Lemburg.)  Similar for PyList_GET_SIZE
-and PyList_GET_ITEM.
-
-- Some of the Py_Get* function, like Py_GetVersion() (but not yet
-Py_GetPath()) are now declared as returning a const char *.  (More
-should follow.)
-
-- Changed the run-time library to check for exceptions after object
-comparisons.  PyObject_Compare() can now return an exception; use
-PyErr_Occurred() to check (there is *no* special return value).
-
-- PyFile_WriteString() and Py_Flushline() now return error indicators
-instead of clearing exceptions.  This fixes an obscure bug where using
-these would clear a pending exception, discovered by Just van Rossum.
-
-- There's a new function, PyArg_ParseTupleAndKeywords(), which parses
-an argument list including keyword arguments.  Contributed by Geoff
-Philbrick.
-
-- PyArg_GetInt() is gone.
-
-- It's no longer necessary to include graminit.h when calling one of
-the extended parser API functions.  The three public grammar start
-symbols are now in Python.h as Py_single_input, Py_file_input, and
-Py_eval_input.
-
-- The CObject interface has a new function,
-PyCObject_Import(module, name).  It calls PyCObject_AsVoidPtr()
-on the object referenced by "module.name".
-
-
-Tkinter
--------
-
-- On popular demand, _tkinter once again installs a hook for readline
-that processes certain Tk events while waiting for the user to type
-(using PyOS_InputHook).
-
-- A patch by Craig McPheeters plugs the most obnoxious memory leaks,
-caused by command definitions referencing widget objects beyond their
-lifetime.
-
-- New standard dialog modules: tkColorChooser.py, tkCommonDialog.py,
-tkMessageBox.py, tkFileDialog.py, tkSimpleDialog.py These interface
-with the new Tk dialog scripts, and provide more "native platform"
-style file selection dialog boxes on some platforms.  Contributed by
-Fredrik Lundh.
-
-- Tkinter.py: when the first Tk object is destroyed, it sets the
-hiddel global _default_root to None, so that when another Tk object is
-created it becomes the new default root.  Other miscellaneous
-changes and fixes.
-
-- The Image class now has a configure method.
-
-- Added a bunch of new winfo options to Tkinter.py; we should now be
-up to date with Tk 4.2.  The new winfo options supported are:
-mananger, pointerx, pointerxy, pointery, server, viewable, visualid,
-visualsavailable.
-
-- The broken bind() method on Canvas objects defined in the Canvas.py
-module has been fixed.  The CanvasItem and Group classes now also have
-an unbind() method.
-
-- The problem with Tkinter.py falling back to trying to import
-"tkinter" when "_tkinter" is not found has been fixed -- it no longer
-tries "tkinter", ever.  This makes diagnosing the problem "_tkinter
-not configured" much easier and will hopefully reduce the newsgroup
-traffic on this topic.
-
-- The ScrolledText module once again supports the 'cnf' parameter, to
-be compatible with the examples in Mark Lutz' book (I know, I know,
-too late...)
-
-- The _tkinter.c extension module has been revamped.  It now support
-Tk versions 4.1 through 8.0; support for 4.0 has been dropped.  It
-works well under Windows and Mac (with the latest Tk ports to those
-platforms).  It also supports threading -- it is safe for one
-(Python-created) thread to be blocked in _tkinter.mainloop() while
-other threads modify widgets.  To make the changes visible, those
-threads must use update_idletasks()method.  (The patch for threading
-in 1.5a3 was broken; in 1.5a4, it is back in a different version,
-which requires access to the Tcl sources to get it to work -- hence it
-is disabled by default.)
-
-- A bug in _tkinter.c has been fixed, where Split() with a string
-containing an unmatched '"' could cause an exception or core dump.
-
-- Unfortunately, on Windows and Mac, Tk 8.0 no longer supports
-CreateFileHandler, so _tkinter.createfilehandler is not available on
-those platforms when using Tk 8.0 or later.  I will have to rethink
-how to interface with Tcl's lower-level event mechanism, or with its
-channels (which are like Python's file-like objects).  Jack Jansen has
-provided a fix for the Mac, so createfilehandler *is* actually
-supported there; maybe I can adapt his fix for Windows.
-
-
-Tools and Demos
----------------
-
-- A new regression test suite is provided, which tests most of the
-standard and built-in modules.  The regression test is run by invoking
-the script Lib/test/regrtest.py.  Barry Warsaw wrote the test harnass;
-he and Roger Masse contributed most of the new tests.
-
-- New tool: faqwiz -- the CGI script that is used to maintain the
-Python FAQ (http://grail.cnri.reston.va.us/cgi-bin/faqw.py).  In
-Tools/faqwiz.
-
-- New tool: webchecker -- a simple extensible web robot that, when
-aimed at a web server, checks that server for dead links.  Available
-are a command line utility as well as a Tkinter based GUI version.  In
-Tools/webchecker.  A simplified version of this program is dissected
-in my article in O'Reilly's WWW Journal, the issue on Scripting
-Languages (Vol 2, No 2); Scripting the Web with Python (pp 97-120).
-Includes a parser for robots.txt files by Skip Montanaro.
-
-- New small tools: cvsfiles.py (prints a list of all files under CVS
-n a particular directory tree), treesync.py (a rather Guido-specific
-script to synchronize two source trees, one on Windows NT, the other
-one on Unix under CVS but accessible from the NT box), and logmerge.py
-(sort a collection of RCS or CVS logs by date).  In Tools/scripts.
-
-- The freeze script now also works under Windows (NT).  Another
-feature allows the -p option to be pointed at the Python source tree
-instead of the installation prefix.  This was loosely based on part of
-xfreeze by Sam Rushing and Bill Tutt.
-
-- New examples (Demo/extend) that show how to use the generic
-extension makefile (Misc/Makefile.pre.in).
-
-- Tools/scripts/h2py.py now supports C++ comments.
-
-- Tools/scripts/pystone.py script is upgraded to version 1.1; there
-was a bug in version 1.0 (distributed with Python 1.4) that leaked
-memory.  Also, in 1.1, the LOOPS variable is incremented to 10000.
-
-- Demo/classes/Rat.py completely rewritten by Sjoerd Mullender.
-
-
-Windows (NT and 95)
--------------------
-
-- New project files for Developer Studio (Visual C++) 5.0 for Windows
-NT (the old VC++ 4.2 Makefile is also still supported, but will
-eventually be withdrawn due to its bulkiness).
-
-- See the note on the new module search path in the "Miscellaneous" section 
-above.
-
-- Support for Win32s (the 32-bit Windows API under Windows 3.1) is
-basically withdrawn.  If it still works for you, you're lucky.
-
-- There's a new extension module, msvcrt.c, which provides various 
-low-level operations defined in the Microsoft Visual C++ Runtime Library.  
-These include locking(), setmode(), get_osfhandle(), set_osfhandle(), and 
-console I/O functions like kbhit(), getch() and putch().
-
-- The -u option not only sets the standard I/O streams to unbuffered
-status, but also sets them in binary mode.  (This can also be done
-using msvcrt.setmode(), by the way.)
-
-- The, sys.prefix and sys.exec_prefix variables point to the directory 
-where Python is installed, or to the top of the source tree, if it was run 
-from there.
-
-- The various os.path modules (posixpath, ntpath, macpath) now support
-passing more than two arguments to the join() function, so
-os.path.join(a, b, c) is the same as os.path.join(a, os.path.join(b,
-c)).
-
-- The ntpath module (normally used as os.path) supports ~ to $HOME 
-expansion in expanduser().
-
-- The freeze tool now works on Windows.
-
-- See also the Tkinter category for a sad note on
-_tkinter.createfilehandler().
-
-- The truncate() method for file objects now works on Windows.
-
-- Py_Initialize() is no longer called when the DLL is loaded.  You
-must call it yourself.
-
-- The time module's clock() function now has good precision through
-the use of the Win32 API QueryPerformanceCounter().
-
-- Mark Hammond will release Python 1.5 versions of PythonWin and his
-other Windows specific code: the win32api extensions, COM/ActiveX
-support, and the MFC interface.
-
-
-Mac
----
-
-- As always, the Macintosh port will be done by Jack Jansen.  He will
-make a separate announcement for the Mac specific source code and the
-binary distribution(s) when these are ready.
-
-
-======================================================================