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-2.4.1.msi to your local machine, then double-click python-2.4.1.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-2.4.1.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.

Bob Ippolito has created an installer for Mac OS X 10.3 and later - you can fetch this from his site, or directly from here.

All others should download either Python-2.4.1.tgz or Python-2.4.1.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-2.4.1.tgz (or bzcat Python-2.4.1.tar.bz2 | tar -xf -). Change to the Python-2.4.1 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.

What's New?

• See the highlights of the Python 2.4 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 in 2.4.1 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:

• Browse HTML on-line
• Download using HTTP.

Files, MD5 checksums, signatures and sizes

7bb2416a4f421c3452d306694d3efbba Python-2.4.1.tgz (9219882 bytes, sig)

de3e9a8836fab6df7c7ce545331afeb3 Python-2.4.1.tar.bz2 (7847025 bytes, sig)

5de61a8f3a20a0cc8d0ec82e9901aa6b python-2.4.1.msi (10970624 bytes, sig)

e639f4554a5dadf4da7a04ae64c8f85a python-2.4.1.ia64.msi (8930816 bytes, sig)

1db4d575a2c5d6ab24be10c38154551a MacPython-OSX-2.4.1-1.dmg (7918391 bytes, sig)

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