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Python 2.4.0

Release Date: Nov. 30, 2004

We are pleased to announce the release of Python 2.4, final on November 30, 2004. This is a final, stable release, and we can recommend that Python users upgrade to this version.

Important: This release is vulnerable to the problem described in security advisory PSF-2006-001 "Buffer overrun in repr() of unicode strings in wide unicode builds (UCS-4)". This fix is included in Python 2.4.4

Note: there's a security fix for SimpleXMLRPCServer.py - this fix is included in 2.4.1

Python 2.4 is the result of almost 18 month's worth of work on top of Python 2.3 and represents another stage in the careful evolution of Python. New language features have been kept to a minimum, many bugs have been fixed and a variety of improvements have been made.

Notable changes in Python 2.4 include improvements to the importing of modules, function decorators, generator expressions, a number of new modules (including subprocess, decimal and cookielib) and a host of bug fixes and other improvements. See the (subjective) highlights or the detailed release notes for more, or consult Andrew Kuchling's What's New In Python for a detailed view of some of the new features of Python 2.4.

Please see the separate bugs page for known issues and the bug reporting procedure.

Download the release

Starting with the Python 2.4 releases the Windows Python installer is being distributed as a Microsoft Installer (.msi) file. To use this, the Windows system must support Microsoft Installer 2.0. Just save the installer file python-2.4.msi to your local machine, then double-click python-2.4.msi to find out if your machine supports MSI. If it doesn't, you'll need to install Microsoft Installer first. Many other packages (such as Word and Office) also include MSI, so you may already have it on your system. If not, you can download it freely from Microsoft for Windows 95, 98 and Me and for Windows NT 4.0 and 2000. Windows XP and later already have MSI; many older machines will already have MSI installed.

The new format installer allows for automated installation and many other shiny new features. There is also a separate installer python-2.4.ia64.msi for Win64-Itanium users.

Windows users may also be interested in Mark Hammond's pywin32 package, available from Sourceforge. pywin32 adds a number of Windows-specific extensions to Python, including COM support and the Pythonwin IDE.

Debian users using Sarge: Python 2.4 has already been packaged for you. Simply apt-get install python2.4. Note that you will also need to install python2.4 versions of any other modules you use.

All others should download either Python-2.4.tgz or Python-2.4.tar.bz2, the source archive. The tar.bz2 is considerably smaller, so get that one if your system has the appropriate tools to deal with it. Unpack it with tar -zxvf Python-2.4.tgz (or bzcat Python-2.4.tar.bz2 | tar -xf -). Change to the Python-2.4 directory and run the "./configure", "make", "make install" commands to compile and install Python. The source archive is also suitable for Windows users who feel the need to build their own version.

Fedora Core 3 users can download RPMs, or build from source. An SRPM is also available for other RPM-based systems, or the source tar-file can be used (see the "rpm" man page for the "-ta" options).

What's New?

  • See the highlights of this release.
  • Andrew Kuchling's What's New in Python 2.4 describes the most visible changes since Python 2.3 in more detail.
  • A detailed list of the changes is in the release notes, or the Misc/NEWS file in the source distribution.
  • For the full list of changes, you can poke around in CVS.

Documentation

The documentation has also been updated:

Downloadable packages of the documentation will be available shortly.

Files, MD5 checksums, signatures and sizes

149ad508f936eccf669d52682cf8e606 Python-2.4.tgz (9198035 bytes, signature)

44c2226eff0f3fc1f2fedaa1ce596533 Python-2.4.tar.bz2 (7840762 bytes, signature)

e9fe1fcdce9fa8c5590ab58b1de3246f python-2.4.msi (10887168 bytes, signature)

5810ed46da712adef93315b08791aea8 python-2.4.ia64.msi (8858624 bytes, signature)

The signatures above were generated with GnuPG using release manager Anthony Baxter's public key which has a key id of 6A45C816.

Full Changelog

Files

Version Operating System Description MD5 Sum File Size GPG
Gzipped source tarball Source release 7656605303e0babbd3c8a7fdec52ddb7 37.3 MB SIG
bzip2 compressed source tarball Source release 44c2226eff0f3fc1f2fedaa1ce596533 7.5 MB SIG
Windows x86 MSI installer Windows e9fe1fcdce9fa8c5590ab58b1de3246f 8.4 MB SIG