12 September 2008 · python, release

To maintain the fairly aggressive release schedule Barry Warsaw and the Python developers have decided to decouple the 2.6 and 3.0 releases, so 3.0 will now be slightly delayed - maybe by a couple of weeks. This gives them the freedom to bring out 2.6rc1 today, with the intention of brings 2.6rc2 out on Wednesday September 17 as originally planned, and hitting the October 1 final release date.

Since 3.0 isn't intended for production work I think this decision is the right one. There are still a few release-blocking issues on the 3.0 code, and there's little point trying to release it before quality is acceptable.

It will be great to see the next new release of Python. If you have any chance at all to test the release candidates you too can help to improve the quality of the eventual release.