Python 2.3.4

Note: See Python 2.3.5 for a patch release which supersedes earlier releases of 2.3.

Important: This release is vulnerable to the problem described in security advisory PSF-2006-001 "Buffer overrun in repr() of unicode strings in wide unicode builds (UCS-4)". This fix is included in Python 2.4.4 and Python 2.5. If you need to remain with Python 2.3, there's a patch available from the security advisory page.

Important: 2.3.5 includes a security fix for SimpleXMLRPCServer.py.

We're happy to announce the release of Python 2.3.4 (final) on May 27th, 2004. This is a bug-fix release for Python 2.3 that fixes a number of bugs, including a couple of weakref bugs and a bug in pickle version 2. There are also a number of fixes to the standard library, and some build fixes - see the release notes for details.

Python 2.3.4 supersedes the previous Python 2.3.3 release.

No new features have been added in Python 2.3.4. The 2.3 series is now in bugfix-only mode.

Please see the separate bugs page for known issues and the bug reporting procedure.

Download the release

Windows users should download the Windows installer, Python-2.3.4.exe, run it and follow the friendly instructions on the screen to complete the installation. Windows users may also be interested in Mark Hammond's win32all, a collection of Windows-specific extensions including COM support and Pythonwin, an IDE built using Windows components.

RPMs suitable for Red Hat/Fedora and source RPMs for other RPM-using operating systems are available from the RPMs page.

All others should download either Python-2.3.4.tgz or Python-2.3.4.tar.bz2, the source archive. The tar.bz2 is considerably smaller, so get that one if your system has the appropriate tools to deal with it. Unpack it with "tar -zxvf Python-2.3.4.tgz" (or "bzcat Python-2.3.4.tar.bz2 | tar -xf -"). Change to the Python-2.3.4 directory and run the "./configure", "make", "make install" commands to compile and install Python. The source archive is also suitable for Windows users who feel the need to build their own version.

Warning for Solaris and HP-UX users: Some versions of the Solaris and HP/UX versions of tar(1) report checksum errors and are unable to unpack the Python source tree. This is caused by some pathnames being too long for the vendor's version. Use GNU tar instead.

If you're having trouble building on your system, check the top-level README file for platform-specific tips, or check the Build Bugs section on the Bugs webpage.

What's New?

• A detailed list of the changes since 2.3.3 is in the release notes, or the file Misc/NEWS in the source distribution.
• See the highlights of the Python 2.3 release. As noted, the 2.3.4 release is a bugfix release of 2.3.3, itself a bugfix release of 2.3.

• The Windows installer now includes the documentation in searchable htmlhelp format, rather than individual HTML files. You can still download the individual HTML files.

• Andrew Kuchling's What's New in Python 2.3 describes the most visible changes since Python 2.2 in more detail.

• For the full list of changes, you can poke around in CVS.

Documentation

The documentation has been updated too:

• Browse HTML documentation on-line
• Download using HTTP.

The interim documentation for new-style classes, last seen for Python 2.2.3, is still relevant for Python 2.3.4. Raymond Hettinger has also written a tutorial on descriptors, introduced in Python 2.2. In addition, The Python 2.3 Method Resolution Order is a nice paper by Michele Simionato that explains the C3 MRO algorithm (new in Python 2.3) clearly. (Also available as reStructured Text. Copied with permission.)

Files, MD5 checksums, signatures, and sizes

b6cf0b19226861a38689d2fabd0931b3 Python-2.3.4.tgz (8502738 bytes, signature)
a2c089faa2726c142419c03472fc4063 Python-2.3.4.tar.bz2 (7189129 bytes, signature)
65275cc93b905c25d130d71c116892f2 Python-2.3.4.exe (9889611 bytes, signature)

The signatures above were generated with GnuPG using the release manager's (Anthony Baxter) public key which has a key id of 6A45C816.