Downloading alpha releases; a good idea?

[Skip Montanaro]

    Jesse> How unstable are alpha releases?  I now have Python 2.0 and am
    Jesse> thinking about updating.  Should I go to 2.1(.1, of course), wait
    Jesse> for 2.2 final, or get 2.2.a2 which is out now?  And if I go with
    Jesse> 2.1.1 should I update to 2.2 final when it comes out?

Most Python releases tend to actually be pretty stable, alpha, beta, or
otherwise.  If you want to play around with new features, then by all means,
download the various prerelease versions.  Otherwise, 2.1.1 is your best
bet.  You can also point your source tree at the CVS repository and be even
more bleeding edge than the alpha releases.  It also makes it fairly easy to
go back and forth between various releases by cvs updating to particular
release names.

-- 
Skip Montanaro (skip at pobox.com)
http://www.mojam.com/
http://www.musi-cal.com/