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/)