IronPython 1.0 RC1 released

It was announced on the IronPython mailinglist today, that the first release candiate of IronPython 1.0 is available for download. IronPython is an implementation of Python written in C# and designed to run on an implementation of CLI like Microsoft .NET 2.0 CLR or Mono 1.1.16.1+. The goal of the IronPython team is for 1.0 is to be compatible with CPython 2.4. But they have included some features from CPython 2.5 that are enabled with the -X:Python25 commandline switch. These include PEP 308: Conditional Expressions and PEP 343: 'with' statement.

As well as many bugfixes, the other positives for me are:

• In some cases code execution is faster, and it launches 2.5 times faster.
• Since I do alot of my IronPython work with Mono, I can now finally exit using Control-D

If you are in Sydney this Thursday 27 July, why not come to the Sydney Python Users Group meeting and hear me talk about my IronPython experiences.