Python 2.1b2 released

[Guido van Rossum]

On time, and with a minimum of fuss, we've released Python 2.1b2.
Thanks again to the many developers who contributed!

Check it out on the Python website:

    http://www.python.org/2.1/

or on SourceForge:

    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=5470&release_id=28334

As it behooves a second beta release, there's no really big news since
2.1b1 was released on March 2:

- Bugs fixed and documentation added. There's now an appendix of the
  Reference Manual documenting nested scopes:

    http://python.sourceforge.net/devel-docs/ref/futures.html

- When nested scopes are enabled by "from __future__ import
  nested_scopes", this also applies to exec, eval() and execfile(),
  and into the interactive interpreter (when using -i).

- Assignment to the internal global variable __debug__ is now illegal.

- unittest.py, a unit testing framework by Steve Purcell (PyUNIT,
  inspired by JUnit), is now part of the standard library.  See the
  PyUnit webpage for documentation:

    http://pyunit.sourceforge.net/

Andrew Kuchling has written (and is continuously updating) an
extensive overview: What's New in Python 2.1:

    http://www.amk.ca/python/2.1/

See also the Release notes posted on SourceForge:

    http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=28334

We are planning to make the final release of Python 2.1 on April 13;
we may release a release candidate a week earlier.

We're also planning a bugfix release for Python 2.0, dubbed 2.0.1; we
don't have a release schedule for this yet.  We could use a volunteer
to act as the bug release manager!

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