Monday, July 12, 2010

Sponsored Development, July 2010

Hello readers,

It's that time once again. I've just spent a very productive two weeks dedicated to Twisted developments, thanks to the support of the Twisted sponsors and the Software Freedom Conservancy.

There were quite a few tickets to review when I got started this time. Here's the list (italicised tickets are now resolved):

#411 - Returning a Deferred from the callback of another Deferred too many times results a RecursionError
#1384 - Document the meaning of trial's terminal output stanza
#1702 - Kill Defer.setTimeout
#2485 - 2to3 cross-compilation tools
#2661 - Deprecate IFinishableConsumer so it can be deleted
#2680 - abdapi ConnectionPool doesn't allow for synchronous close
#3546 - Add custom time zone support to twisted.log.FileLogObserver
#3586 - I want to install twisted without a c compiler
#3802 - win32 SerialPort requires a reactor that provides "addEvent" method, but doesn't have a good error message if it gets a different one
#4038 - DeprecationWarning: the MimeWriter module is deprecated; use the email package instead
#4045 - Twisted's Failure fake '_Frame' object lacks f_locals
#4138 - A fresh Twisted checkout should support "setup.py sdist"
#4299 - Remove deprecated twisted.web.trp
#4328 - Deprecate twisted.python.text.docstringLStrip
#4378 - Error handling in NetstringReceiver broken
#4419 - IRCClient.noticed() default is prone to causing loops
#4477 - UNIX ports fail to log their path when stopped
#4511 - trial(1) man page says "I don't know why this is in trial." for --disablegc
#4519 - Delay parsing of request body until Request.args is accessed
#4520 - pb.CopiedFailure.throwExceptionIntoGenerator breaks in Python 2.6.
#4522 - Speed up `reactor.spawnProcess()` by only closing open file descriptors
#4527 - Change either documentation or code of t.i.test.reactormixins.ReactorBuilder.requiredInterface
#4531 - Static analysis of module attributes in twisted.python.modules
#4536 - Credentials materials are compared unsafely throughout Twisted
#4540 - t.n.hosts.searchFileFor does not close the file
#4555 - Replace loop-like uses of map() with a loop
#4566 - Improve lore2sphinx buildbot results for `projects/conch`
#4567 - Improve lore2sphinx buildbot results for `projects/core/development`

Additionally, I had lots of time to spend worked on other tickets:

#526 - [PATCH] make t.w.microdom respect case sensitivity
#989 - Default log observer chokes on unicode messages
#1784 - disttrial --hosts=kunai,takkun,muon twisted
#2179 - Parameterize the root directory of the FTP server for non-anonymous logins
#3169 - Add FilePath.descendant(segmentsToChild) to replace fp.child(a).child(b).child(c)
#3242 - use python 2.5 'spwd' module instead of z3p secret 'shadow' module when available
#3595 - the interaction of the fireOnOneErrback and consumeErrors parameters to DeferredList is not well documented
#3690 - SerialPort never calls connectionLost(reason)
#4300 - Write some unit tests for Deferreds
#4473 - strports.endpoint
#4487 - report multiple tests with the same results at the same time
#4492 - deprecatedModuleAttribute emits warning twice when deprecated module is imported
#4494 - FTPRealm home directory code hardcodes '/home'
#4500 - Use Sphinx for Twisted Documentation
#4501 - trial's error reporting (especially --tbformat=emacs) does not like unicode exceptions
#4503 - domish gets confused by spaces in xmlns names
#4504 - Document reactor.listenMulticast's listenMultiple keyword argument
#4513 - twisted.names server sends incorrect authority section
#4517 - documentation for blockingCallFromThread doesn't exactly say the given callable can return a Deferred
#4528 - t.news.database should use t.m.smtp.sendmail and the email package
#4534 - Update twisted.application.service.IProcess to use Attributes
#4535 - zippath.child('..') does not raise InsecurePath
#4536 - Credentials materials are compared unsafely throughout Twisted
#4539 - fileno() gets called on a ReadDescriptor after removing it from the reactor
#4542 - `LineReceiver` API documentation should indicate when delimiter is stripped etc
#4556 - KQueue reactor misspelled in reactorbuilder

You can find more details about these tickets in the Twisted issue tracker. To look up a ticket, visit http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/ticketnumber. For example, http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/4487

Many of these which are still open are now up for review and should be closed over the next few weeks as other developers have a chance to take a look and provide feedback.

A careful reading of this list reveals a few tickets related to our attempts to convert Twisted's documentation from Lore to Sphinx, an undertaking you already know about if you follow the Twisted mailing list. Kevin Horn has spearheaded this project and made great progress towards the goal. Even though the conversion isn't complete yet, there's already some really great looking results.

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Twisted 10.1.0 released

Twisted 10.1.0 is finally out. It's a month late, but it's finally out there and free from the shackles of British rule.

Highlights include:
  • Deferreds now support cancellation
  • A new "endpoint" interface which can abstractly describe stream transport endpoints such as TCP and SSL
  • inotify support for Linux, which allows monitoring of file system events.
  • AMP supports transferring timestamps
Note also that this is the last release in which we will support Windows for Python 2.4.

For more information, see the NEWS file.

It's stable, backwards compatible, well tested and in every way an improvement. Download it the tarball, the Windows installer for Python 2.5 or the Windows installer for Python 2.6.

Update: We now have executable Windows installers for Python 2.5 and Python 2.6 to complement the MSIs.

Many thanks to Glyph Lefkowitz, who helped prepare the release, and the PyCon 2010 sprinters, who did so much of the work for this release.