[pypy-commit] pypy default: write the release announcement

[fijal]

Author: Maciej Fijalkowski <fijall at gmail.com>
Branch: 
Changeset: r63054:03d69244d043
Date: 2013-04-05 14:12 +0200
http://bitbucket.org/pypy/pypy/changeset/03d69244d043/

Log:	write the release announcement

diff --git a/pypy/doc/release-2.0.0-beta2.rst b/pypy/doc/release-2.0.0-beta2.rst
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+===============
+PyPy 2.0 beta 2
+===============
+
+We're pleased to announce the 2.0 beta 2 release of PyPy. This is a major
+release of PyPy and we're getting very close to 2.0 final, however it includes
+quite a few new features that require further testing. Please test and report
+issues, so we can have a rock-solid 2.0 final. It also includes a performance
+regression of about 5% compared to 2.0 beta 1 that we hope to fix before
+2.0 final. The ARM support is not working yet and we're working hard to
+make it happen before the 2.0 final. The new major features are:
+
+* JIT now supports stackless features, that is greenlets and stacklets. This
+  means that JIT can now optimize the code that switches the context. It enables
+  running `eventlet`_ and `gevent`_ on PyPy (although gevent requires some
+  special support that's not quite finished, read below).
+
+* This is the first PyPy release that includes `cffi`_ as a core library.
+  Version 0.6 comes included in the PyPy library. cffi has seen a lot of
+  adoption among library authors and we believe it's the best way to wrap
+  C libaries. You can see examples of cffi usage in `_curses.py`_ and
+  `_sqlite3.py`_ in the PyPy source code.
+
+You can download the PyPy 2.0 beta 2 release here:
+
+    http://pypy.org/download.html 
+
+What is PyPy?
+=============
+
+PyPy is a very compliant Python interpreter, almost a drop-in replacement for
+CPython 2.7.3. It's fast (`pypy 2.0 beta 2 and cpython 2.7.3`_
+performance comparison) due to its integrated tracing JIT compiler.
+
+This release supports x86 machines running Linux 32/64, Mac OS X 64 or
+Windows 32. It also supports ARM machines running Linux, however this is
+disabled for the beta 2 release.
+Windows 64 work is still stalling, we would welcome a volunteer
+to handle that.
+
+.. _`pypy 2.0 beta 2 and cpython 2.7.3`: http://bit.ly/USXqpP
+
+How to use PyPy?
+================
+
+We suggest using PyPy from a `virtualenv`_. Once you have a virtualenv
+installed, you can follow instructions from `pypy documentation`_ on how
+to proceed. This document also covers other `installation schemes`_.
+
+.. _`pypy documentation`: http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/getting-started.html#installing-using-virtualenv
+.. _`virtualenv`: http://www.virtualenv.org/en/latest/
+.. _`installation schemes`: http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/getting-started.html#installing-pypy
+
+Highlights
+==========
+
+* ``cffi`` is officially supported by PyPy. It comes included in the standard
+  library, just use ``import cffi``
+
+* stackless support - `eventlet`_ just works and `gevent`_ requires `pypycore`_
+  and `pypy-hacks`_ branch of gevent (which mostly disables cython-based
+  modules)
+
+* callbacks from C are now much faster. pyexpat is about 3x faster, cffi
+  callbacks around the same
+
+* ``__length_hint__`` is implemented (PEP 424)
+
+* a lot of numpy improvements
+
+Improvements since 1.9
+======================
+
+* `JIT hooks`_ are now a powerful tool to introspect the JITting process that
+  PyPy performs
+
+* various performance improvements compared to 1.9 and 2.0 beta 1
+
+* operations on ``long`` objects are now as fast as in CPython (from
+  roughly 2x slower)
+
+* we now have special strategies for ``dict``/``set``/``list`` which contain
+  unicode strings, which means that now such collections will be both faster
+  and more compact.