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-2.4.2.msi to your local machine, then double-click python-2.4.2.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-2.4.2.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.

RPMs for Fedora Core 3 (and similar) are available, see the 2.4.2 RPMs page

All others should download either python-2.4.2.tgz or python-2.4.2.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-2.4.2.tgz (or bzcat Python-2.4.2.tar.bz2 | tar -xf -). Change to the Python-2.4.2 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 2.4.2 can be found 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.
• Documentation is available in Windows Help (.chm) format - python24.chm.

Files, MD5 checksums, signatures and sizes

07cfc759546f6723bb367be5b1ce9875 Python-2.4.2.tgz (9239975 bytes, signature)

98db1465629693fc434d4dc52db93838 Python-2.4.2.tar.bz2 (7853169 bytes, signature)

bfb6fc0704d225c7a86d4ba8c922c7f5 python-2.4.2.msi (9671168 bytes, signature)

f9a189a11316dc523732b38334c9dd7b python-2.4.2.ia64.msi (8110080 bytes, signature)

XXXXX575a2c5d6ab24be10c38154551a MacPython-OSX-2.4.2-1.dmg (7918391 bytes, signature)

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