Python 3.12.0 beta 1 released

I’m pleased to announce the release of Python 3.12 beta 1 (and feature freeze for Python 3.12).

https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3120b1/

This is a beta preview of Python 3.12

Python 3.12 is still in development. This release, 3.12.0b1, is the first of four planned beta release previews of 3.12.

Beta release previews are intended to give the wider community the opportunity to test new features and bug fixes and to prepare their projects to support the new feature release.

We strongly encourage maintainers of third-party Python projects to test with 3.12 during the beta phase and report issues found to [the Python bug tracker (Issues · python/cpython · GitHub) as soon as possible. While the release is planned to be feature complete entering the beta phase, it is possible that features may be modified or, in rare cases, deleted up until the start of the release candidate phase (Monday, 2023-07-31). Our goal is to have no ABI changes after beta 4 and as few code changes as possible after 3.12.0rc1, the first release candidate. To achieve that, it will be extremely important to get as much exposure for 3.12 as possible during the beta phase.

Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and its use is not recommended for production environments.

Major new features of the 3.12 series, compared to 3.11

Some of the new major new features and changes in Python 3.12 are:

  • New type annotation syntax for generic classes (PEP 695).
  • More flexible f-string parsing, allowing many things previously disallowed (PEP 701).
  • Even more improved error messages. More exceptions potentially caused by typos now make suggestions to the user.
  • Many large and small performance improvements (like PEP 709).
  • Support for the Linux perf profiler to report Python function names in traces.
  • The deprecated wstr and wstr_length members of the C implementation of unicode objects were removed, per PEP 623.
  • In the unittest module, a number of long deprecated methods and classes were removed. (They had been deprecated since Python 3.1 or 3.2).
  • The deprecated smtpd and distutils modules have been removed (see PEP 594 and PEP 632. The setuptools package (installed by default in virtualenvs and many other places) continues to provide the distutils module.
  • A number of other old, broken and deprecated functions, classes and methods have been removed.
  • Invalid backslash escape sequences in strings now warn with SyntaxWarning instead of DeprecationWarning, making them more visible. (They will become syntax errors in the future.)
  • The internal representation of integers has changed in preparation for performance enhancements. (This should not affect most users as it is an internal detail, but it may cause problems for Cython-generated code.)
  • (Hey, fellow core developer, if a feature you find important is missing from this list, let Thomas know.)

For more details on the changes to Python 3.12, see What’s new in Python 3.12. The next pre-release of Python 3.12 will be 3.12.0b2, currently scheduled for 2023-05-29.

More resources

PEP 693, the Python 3.12 Release Schedule.
Report bugs via GitHub Issues.

And now for something completely different

As the first beta release marks the point at which we fork off the release branch from the main development branch, here’s a poem about forks in the road.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves, no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
The Road Not Taken, by Robert Frost.

Enjoy the new release

Thanks to all of the many volunteers who help make Python Development and these releases possible! Please consider supporting our efforts by volunteering yourself or through organization contributions to the Python Software Foundation.
Your release team,
Thomas Wouters
Ned Deily
Steve Dower

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Python 3.11.0b1 is now available

We did it, team! After quite a bumpy release process and a bunch of last-time fixes, we have reached beta 1 and feature freeze. What a ride eh? You can get the shiny new release artefacts from here:https://www.python.org/downloads/release/python-3110b1/This is a beta preview of Python 3.11Python 3.11 is still in development. 3.11.0b1 is the first of four planned beta release previews. Beta release previews are intended to give the wider community the opportunity to test new features and bug fixes and to prepare their projects to support the new feature release.We strongly encourage maintainers of third-party Python projects to test with 3.11 during the beta phase and report issues found to the Python bug tracker as soon as possible. While the release is planned to be feature complete entering the beta phase, it is possible that features may be modified or, in rare cases, deleted up until the start of the release candidate phase (Monday, 2021-08-02). Our goal is have no ABI changes after beta 4 and as few code changes as possible after 3.11.0rc1, the first release candidate. To achieve that, it will be extremely important to get as much exposure for 3.11 as possible during the beta phase.Please keep in mind that this is a preview release and its use is not recommended for production environments.Major new features of the 3.11 series, compared to 3.10Among the new major new features and changes so far:PEP 657 – Include Fine-Grained Error Locations in TracebacksPEP 654 –  Exception Groups and except*PEP 673 –   Self TypePEP 646 –  Variadic GenericsPEP 680– tomllib: Support for Parsing TOML in the Standard LibraryPEP 675– Arbitrary Literal String TypePEP 655– Marking individual TypedDict items as required or potentially-missingbpo-46752– Introduce task groups to asyncioThe Faster Cpython Project is already yielding some exciting results. Python 3.11 is up to 10-60% faster than Python 3.10. On average, we measured a 1.22x speedup on the standard benchmark suite. See Faster CPython for details.(Hey, fellow core developer, if a feature you find important is missing from this list, let Pablo know.)The next pre-release of Python 3.11 will be 3.11.0b2, currently scheduled for Monday, 2022-05-30.More resourcesOnline DocumentationPEP 664, 3.11 Release ScheduleReport bugs at https://bugs.python.org.Help fund Python and its community.And now for something completely differentThe holographic principle is a tenet of string theories and a supposed property of quantum gravity that states that the description of a volume of space can be thought of as encoded on a lower-dimensional boundary to the region—such as a light-like boundary like a gravitational horizon. First proposed by Gerard ‘t Hooft, it was given a precise string-theory interpretation by Leonard Susskind, who combined his ideas with previous ones of ‘t Hooft and Charles Thorn.[ Leonard Susskind said, “The three-dimensional world of ordinary experience––the universe filled with galaxies, stars, planets, houses, boulders, and people––is a hologram, an image of reality cited on a distant two-dimensional (2D) surface.” As pointed out by Raphael Bousso, Thorn observed in 1978 that string theory admits a lower-dimensional description in which gravity emerges from it in what would now be called a holographic way.The holographic principle was inspired by black hole thermodynamics, which conjectures that the maximal entropy in any region scales with the radius squared, and not cubed as might be expected. In the case of a black hole, the insight was that the informational content of all the objects that have fallen into the hole might be entirely contained in surface fluctuations of the event horizon. The holographic principle resolves the black hole information paradox within the framework of string theory. However, there exist classical solutions to the Einstein equations that allow values of the entropy larger than those allowed by an area law, hence in principle larger than those of a black hole. These are the so-called “Wheeler’s bags of gold”. The existence of such solutions conflicts with the holographic interpretation, and their effects in a quantum theory of gravity including the holographic principle are not fullWe hope you enjoy the new releases!Thanks to all of the many volunteers who help make Python Development and these releases possible! Please consider supporting our efforts by volunteering yourself or through organization contributions to the Python Software Foundation.https://www.python.org/psf/Your friendly release team,Ned Deily @nad Steve Dower @steve.dower Pablo Galindo Salgado @pablogsal

Python 3.11.0b2 is now available

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