Python 3000 released as 3.0a1

[Guido van Rossum]

[Bcc: python-list at python.org]

The first Python 3000 release is out -- Python 3.0a1. Be the first one
on your block to download it!

   http://python.org/download/releases/3.0/

Excerpts:

Python 3000 (a.k.a. "Py3k", and released as Python 3.0) is a new
version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of
releases. The language is mostly the same, but many details,
especially how built-in objects like dictionaries and strings work,
have changed considerably, and a lot of deprecated features have
finally been removed.

This is an ongoing project; the cleanup isn't expected to be complete
until 2008. In particular there are plans to reorganize the standard
library namespace.

The release plan is to have a series of alpha releases in 2007, beta
releases in 2008, and a final release in August 2008. The alpha
releases are primarily aimed at developers who want a sneak peek at
the new langauge, especially those folks who plan to port their code
to Python 3000. The hope is that by the time of the final release,
many 3rd party packages will already be available in a 3.0-compatible
form.

More links:

* Online docs: http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/
* What's new: http://docs.python.org/dev/3.0/whatsnew/3.0.html

* Source tar ball: http://python.org/ftp/python/3.0/Python-3.0a1.tgz
* Windows MSI installer: http://python.org/ftp/python/3.0/python-3.0a1.msi

* PEP 3000: http://python.org/dev/peps/pep-3000/
* Issue tracker: http://bugs.python.org/
* Py3k dev list: http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-3000/
* Conversion tool for Python 2.x code:
  http://svn.python.org/view/sandbox/trunk/2to3/

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