[SciPy-dev] Python (Enthought Edition) for Windows test release

[Joe Cooper]

Hi all,

The much anticipated new release of the Enthought Edition of Python 
(a.k.a. Enthon) is just about ready for release into the real world. 
I'd like for some of you brave developer-type folks to give it a go 
before I announce it more widely and link it from the Enthon home page.

Some highlights of the latest version:

- iPython 0.6.7_rc2 is the default shell

- The Enthought Open Source Python tools have been added.  This includes 
a few things that migrated out of the SciPy CVS repository and into the 
Enthought SVN repository about a year ago, or thereabouts. 
Specifically, new versions of traits, chaco, kiva, etc.  It's all really 
cool, but documentation is not yet available that I know of.  If it 
doesn't work for you, ask Dave lots of questions.  Tell him I said it 
would be OK.  (I'm joking.  Don't ask Dave anything.  Documentation 
exists, somewhere, and I'll chase someone around the office until it is 
made available on the website.)

- matplotlib

- Pyrex

- Elmer

- Most packages have been updated to their latest revision, with 
exceptions for compatibility

- readline (from UNC Tools, to be specific)

- Additional documentation and some reorganization of the menus to make 
it less confusing and more functional

- An extra 20 megabytes of random-seeming stuff...Woohoo!  It's not over 
100MB, yet, but I reckon one more revision will do it.

What isn't in this latest version:

- Python 2.4

There will be an all-singing, all-dancing, all-new, from-scratch Enthon 
built from the new MSI-based Python 2.4 installer, but it's a pretty big 
job, so I wanted to get a final 2.3 release out into the world before I 
hunker down and figure out the new msi installer.  That said, I'm 
downright ecstatic to be giving Wise the boot.  If I never see that line 
editor again in this lifetime, it will be too soon.

In the meantime, if you all can grab this latest test release and let me 
know how it works for you, I'd be very grateful.  Do whatever it is that 
you currently do with build 1057 of Enthon (the last public release), 
and if it doesn't work right in build 1062, let me know--send the error 
output and a test case so I can reproduce it and know it is fixed.  If 
there's other stuff you'd like to be able to do, but Enthon never quite 
worked right, I won't mind hearing about that either.

So, without further ado, here's the link:

http://download.enthought.com/enthought_python-2.3.3-1062.exe

Thanks!