Hello Python Community,

We're pleased to announce the Alpha release of IronPython 2.7 which can be 
downloaded at http://ironpython.codeplex.com/releases/view/42434.  This is a 
major new version of IronPython with a number of significant updates.  Because 
this is an Alpha release it is not yet feature complete nor fully compatible 
with CPython 2.7.  Changes thus far include:

*         Updates the language to be compatible with CPython 2.7

*         Adds integrated Visual Studio support (IronPython Tools for Visual 
Studio)

*         Extends CPython 2.7's documentation with useful information 
pertaining to IronPython

*         Adds the mmap and signal modules

*         Includes a number of performance updates and bug fixes

*         Switches the license to Apache License, Version 2.0

*         Requires .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 4.0

Python 2.7 includes a number of features backported from the Python 3.0 series. 
 This release implements the new builtin _io module, includes dictionary and 
set comprehensions, set literals, supports multiple context managers in the 
with statement, and adds several new functions to the itertools methods, and 
auto indexing for the new string formatting.  There are also numerous updates 
to the standard library such as ordered dictionaries and the new argparse 
module.
This release also includes a "IronPython Tools for Visual Studio" option within 
the IronPython installer.  This enables one install to get both IronPython and 
IronPython Visual Studio support assuming you have an existing installation of 
Visual Studio 2010.  This version of IronPython Tools includes a number of bug 
fixes as well as the start of improved WPF designer support.  We discovered 
very late that the WPF designer support may crash VS when not running under the 
debugger.  If you'd like to try the WPF designer support and give us feedback, 
just launch another Visual Studio instance and attach to the instance in which 
you are using the WPF designer support.
We've also updated the IronPython installer to include documentation based upon 
the CPython documentation.  This new .chm file includes documentation on the 
Python language and standard library.  It's been extended from the normal 
Python documentation to include IronPython specific topics such as the DLR 
hosting APIs and extending IronPython from statically typed .NET languages.
We flushed out more support for missing built-in modules which CPython 
includes.  This release includes the mmap and signal modules bringing better 
support for interoperating with unmanaged code.
As usual there are a number of bug fixes and performance improvements.  This 
release includes major performance improvements in cPickle, the sum built-in 
function, and includes support for fast exceptions which do not use the .NET 
exception mechanism.  There have also been improvements to significantly reduce 
memory usage of the IronPython ASTs.  One of the end results of these numerous 
improvements is that IronPython's startup time has decreased by 10% when 
compared to IronPython 2.6.1.
Finally, with this release we have changed the license from the Microsoft 
Public License to the Apache License, Version 2.0.  We've made this change 
based upon continual feedback and questions from the community.  The Apache 
License will be more familiar while remaining an open source license.
- The IronPython Team
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