Wednesday, September 23, 2009

IronPython 2.6 Release Candidate

We released the IronPython 2.6 release candidate on CodePlex yesterday. If all goes well, this will be the ONLY RC and we’ll republish it as the RTW build in about a month. So if you’ve been holding off on experimenting with the 2.6 release, now’s the time to jump in with both feet.

As I’ve written before on this blog, this is a HUGE release for us:

• Python 2.6 features such as with statement, class decorators and byte literals
• Adaptive Compilation
• __clrtype__ Metaclasses
• ctypes and Frames support
• Lightweight Debugging
• 417 bugs fixed!

Anyway, with 2.6 winding down, the IronPython team finds ourselves in a unique position that we’ve never been in before: caught up. As far as I can tell, most of the Python community hasn’t made the move to Python 3.1 and Python 2.7 is looking like it will be released next summer. So IronPython is caught up with the latest version of Python most of the Python community appears to be using.

So that begs the question: what do we do now?

Of course, we want to hear from you regarding our next steps, but some things we are looking at include:

• .NET Framework 4.0
  We’ve shipped CTP releases of IronPython for each public beta of Visual Studio 2010 and  .NET Framework 4.0. You can expect that to continue as Visual Studio 2010 winds down and ships.
• Fixing Bugs
  417 bugs fixed is good, but there are still 839 active work items in our issue tracker. In previous releases, we’ve done minor bug fix releases every few months so we’ll probably keep up that cadence. Make sure you go vote for bugs you think are important.
• App Compatibility
  One thing we can do is take some of the more popular Python apps such as Django and Mercurial and make sure they run well on IronPython. In some cases, there may need to be changes to the Python apps to get them to run on IronPython (for example, see Jeff Hardy’s patch for running Django on IronPython) which assuredly means more time with lawyers for me.
• Missing Modules
  While IronPython 2.6 is our implementation of Python 2.6, there are binary modules we haven’t implemented yet like _csv, _ast and pyexpat. You could consider this App Compatibility work, but we have a different internal process for bug fixing and implementing new features so I broke this out separately.
• Documentation
  Invariably an area for improvement in all software, our doc story today is pretty much “go look at docs.python.org”. Of course, that doesn’t cover any IronPython specific functionality. Of course, what would be great would be to combine existing Python docs with IronPython specific docs in a single reference, which also assuredly means more time with lawyers for me.
• Tutorials
  If you haven’t seen Michael Foord’s Try Python, it’s awesome. However, it was recently pointed out to me that it doesn’t include any IronPython specific behavior (importing and interoperating with .NET types for example). The IronRuby Tutorial has specific IronRuby features and it would be awesome to do the same for IronPython. Of course, if we wrote new tutorials in reStructured Text, then I’m guessing it would be easy for Michael to include it in Try Python via his rst2xaml tool.
• “Just Text” in Silverlight
  If you haven’t seen MIX Online Labs Gestalt project, browse to one of the samples and View Source. Python as “just text” in the browser. Cool, eh? Jimmy is working on implementing the “just text” model for the Silverlight version of IronPython (and IronRuby).
• Visual Studio
  There’s no work item for VS Integration in our issue tracker, but there have been 112 votes for IronPython integration (as well as 79 votes for IronRuby integration) in the VS 2010 connect bug database. No promises here, but we are acutely aware of how popular this suggestion is.
• CodePlex Foundation
  The CodePlex Foundation is a new non-profit foundation sponsored by Microsoft with the explicit mission “to enable the exchange of code and understanding among software companies and open source communities.” As one of the oldest open source projects at Microsoft, we are very interested in the CodePlex Foundation as you might imagine. However, CodePlex Foundation is VERY new - everything is tagged “interim” for the first 100 days. Once the Foundation elects non-interim board members and establishes things like a charter and by-laws, you can be sure we’ll be investigating it more thoroughly. In other words, definitely more time with lawyers for me.

In case I haven’t said it lately, it’s great working on the IronPython team with Dino Viehland, Dave Fugate and David DiCato (The IronRuby guys aren’t bad either!). Also, I may whine about the amount of time I spend with lawyers, but honestly Yong, Kathryn and Kevin – our main LCA contacts – do a great job helping us figure out how and where to push the envelope so thanks to them as well.