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From: Guido van Rossum <guido@CNRI.Reston.Va.US>
Subject: Python 1.5.1 released -- I'm outtahere!
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 1998 04:13:31 GMT

After a record (short) beta test period, Python 1.5.1 is ready for
release.  Pick up the source here:

	ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/src/pyth151.tgz

(it's still a gzipped tar file) or get the Windows installer here:

	ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/win32/pyth151.exe

Or go to the Python web site and follow the convenient links:

	http://www.python.org

Extensions and applications intended to work with Python should work
just as well with Python 1.5.1; there's in general no need to
recompile.

If you built the beta version, make sure to do a "make clean" before
building 1.5.1; there's one important reordering of a structure field
(in order to preserve binary compatibility with 1.5).

Some highlights -- for the full scoop see Misc/NEWS in the source tree:

- The documentation is now unbundled -- download it from the
documentation page.

- New python-mode.el (Emacs/Xemacs editing mode).

- Printing of recursive dictionaries and lists no longer causes a core
dump.

- A raise statement without arguments re-raises the last exception
raised in the current function.

- The import statement is now serialized between different threads.

- The finalization order is much more sensible.

- On Mac and Windows, the case of module file names must match the
case as used in the import statement. (On Unix, this was always true,
of course.)

- When you specify the -t option, the tokenizer warns about
inconsistent mixing of spaces and tabs. Two -t options and this causes
syntax errors instead. See also Tools/scripts/tabnanny.py. All library
modules are warning-free.

- The freeze tool now supports hierarchical module names.

- New standard modules: threading, getpass, imaplib, poplib, smtplib,
Tkdnd (Tkinter drag-and-drop).

- Some modules that were declared obsolete a while ago have been moved
out of the standard library path.

According to tradition, I'm taking a short vacation now.  (In my
opinion, taking vacations after releases is the *real* secret to
successful open source software development. :-)  See you all on
Monday, April 20!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)