Add several items and placeholders

Doc/whatsnew/2.7.rst

@@ -6,7 +6,8 @@
 :Release: |release|
 :Date: |today|
 
-.. Fix accents on Kristjan Valur Jonsson, Fuerstenau.
+.. Fix accents on Kristjan Valur Jonsson, Fuerstenau, Tarek Ziade.
+.. OrderedDict
 
 .. $Id$
    Rules for maintenance:
@@ -57,10 +58,18 @@ No release schedule has been decided yet for 2.7.
 
 .. ========================================================================
 .. Large, PEP-level features and changes should be described here.
-.. Should there be a new section here for 3k migration?
-.. Or perhaps a more general section describing module changes/deprecation?
 .. ========================================================================
 
+PEP 372: Adding an ordered dictionary to collections
+=============================
+
+XXX write this
+
+Several modules will now use :class:`OrderedDict` by default.  The
+:mod:`ConfigParser` module uses :class:`OrderedDict` for the list
+of sections and the options within a section.
+The :method:`namedtuple._asdict` method returns an :class:`OrderedDict`
+as well.
 
 
 Other Language Changes
@@ -86,30 +95,6 @@ Some smaller changes made to the core Python language are:
   (Contributed by Fredrik Johansson and Victor Stinner; :issue:`3439`.)
 
 
-* Integers are now stored internally either in base 2**15 or in base
-  2**30, the base being determined at build time.  Previously, they
-  were always stored in base 2**15.  Using base 2**30 gives
-  significant performance improvements on 64-bit machines, but
-  benchmark results on 32-bit machines have been mixed.  Therefore,
-  the default is to use base 2**30 on 64-bit machines and base 2**15
-  on 32-bit machines; on Unix, there's a new configure option
-  --enable-big-digits that can be used to override this default.
-
-  Apart from the performance improvements this change should be
-  invisible to end users, with one exception: for testing and
-  debugging purposes there's a new structseq ``sys.long_info`` that
-  provides information about the internal format, giving the number of
-  bits per digit and the size in bytes of the C type used to store
-  each digit::
-
-     >>> import sys
-     >>> sys.long_info
-     sys.long_info(bits_per_digit=30, sizeof_digit=4)
-
-
-  (Contributed by Mark Dickinson; :issue:`4258`.)
-
-
 .. ======================================================================
 
 
@@ -129,18 +114,44 @@ A few performance enhancements have been added:
   (Suggested by Martin von Loewis and implemented by Antoine Pitrou;
   :issue:`4074`.)
 
-* The garbage collector tries to avoid tracking simple containers which
+* The garbage collector tries to avoid tracking simple containers
-  can't be part of a cycle. As of now, this is true for tuples and dicts
+  which can't be part of a cycle. In Python 2.7, this is now true for
-  containing atomic types (such as ints, strings, etc.). Transitively, a dict
+  tuples and dicts containing atomic types (such as ints, strings,
-  containing tuples of atomic types won't be tracked either. This helps bring
+  etc.). Transitively, a dict containing tuples of atomic types won't
-  down the individual cost of each garbage collection, since it decreases the
+  be tracked either. This helps reduce the cost of each
-  number of objects to be considered and traversed by the collector.
+  garbage collection by decreasing the number of objects to be
-
+  considered and traversed by the collector.
-  To help diagnosing this optimization, a new function in the :mod:`gc`
-  module, :func:`is_tracked`, returns True if a given instance is tracked
-  by the garbage collector, False otherwise.
   (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou; :issue:`4688`.)
 
+* Integers are now stored internally either in base 2**15 or in base
+  2**30, the base being determined at build time.  Previously, they
+  were always stored in base 2**15.  Using base 2**30 gives
+  significant performance improvements on 64-bit machines, but
+  benchmark results on 32-bit machines have been mixed.  Therefore,
+  the default is to use base 2**30 on 64-bit machines and base 2**15
+  on 32-bit machines; on Unix, there's a new configure option
+  :option:`--enable-big-digits` that can be used to override this default.
+
+  Apart from the performance improvements this change should be
+  invisible to end users, with one exception: for testing and
+  debugging purposes there's a new structseq ``sys.long_info`` that
+  provides information about the internal format, giving the number of
+  bits per digit and the size in bytes of the C type used to store
+  each digit::
+
+     >>> import sys
+     >>> sys.long_info
+     sys.long_info(bits_per_digit=30, sizeof_digit=4)
+
+
+  (Contributed by Mark Dickinson; :issue:`4258`.)
+
+* The division algorithm for long integers has been made faster
+  by tightening the inner loop, doing shifts instead of multiplications,
+  and fixing an unnecessary extra iteration.
+  Various benchmarks show speedups of between 50% and 150% for long
+  integer divisions and modulo operations.
+  (Contributed by Mark Dickinson; :issue:`5512`.)
 
 .. ======================================================================
 
@@ -153,14 +164,11 @@ changes, sorted alphabetically by module name. Consult the
 :file:`Misc/NEWS` file in the source tree for a more complete list of
 changes, or look through the Subversion logs for all the details.
 
-* In Distutils, distutils.sdist.add_defaults now uses package_dir and data_files
+* It is no longer mandatory to store clear-text passwords in the
-  to feed MANIFEST.
-
-* It is not mandatory anymore to store clear text passwords in the
   :file:`.pypirc` file when registering and uploading packages to PyPI. As long
   as the username is present in that file, the :mod:`distutils` package will
-  prompt for the password if not present.  (Added by tarek, with the initial
+  prompt for the password if not present.  (Added by Tarek Ziade,
-  contribution of Nathan Van Gheem; :issue:`4394`.)
+  with the initial contribution by Nathan Van Gheem; :issue:`4394`.)
 
 * The :mod:`bz2` module's :class:`BZ2File` now supports the context
   management protocol, so you can write ``with bz2.BZ2File(...) as f: ...``.
@@ -200,6 +208,13 @@ changes, or look through the Subversion logs for all the details.
 
   Contributed by Raymond Hettinger; :issue:`1696199`.
 
+* In Distutils, :func:`distutils.sdist.add_defaults` now uses
+  *package_dir* and *data_files* to feed MANIFEST.
+
+* A new function in the :mod:`gc` module, :func:`is_tracked`, returns
+  True if a given instance is tracked by the garbage collector, False
+  otherwise. (Contributed by Antoine Pitrou; :issue:`4688`.)
+
 * The :mod:`gzip` module's :class:`GzipFile` now supports the context
   management protocol, so you can write ``with gzip.GzipFile(...) as f: ...``.
   (Contributed by Hagen Fuerstenau; :issue:`3860`.)
@@ -208,6 +223,17 @@ changes, or look through the Subversion logs for all the details.
   an invalid file descriptor.  (Implemented by Benjamin Peterson;
   :issue:`4991`.)
 
+* The :class:`itertools`
+* The :mod:`json` module was upgraded to version 2.0.9 of the
+  simplejson package, which includes a C extension that makes
+  encoding and decoding faster.
+  (Contributed by Bob Ippolito; :issue:`4136`.)
+
+  To support the new :class:`OrderedDict` type, :func:`json.load`
+  now has an optional *object_pairs_hook* parameter that will be called
+  with any object literal that decodes to a list of pairs.
+  (Contributed by Raymond Hettinger; :issue:`5381`.)
+
 * The :mod:`pydoc` module now has help for the various symbols that Python
   uses.  You can now do ``help('<<')`` or ``help('@')``, for example.
   (Contributed by David Laban; :issue:`4739`.)
@@ -229,6 +255,13 @@ changes, or look through the Subversion logs for all the details.
 
   (Contributed by Gregory P. Smith.)
 
+* The :mod:`unittest` module was enhanced in several ways.
+  Test cases can raise the :exc:`SkipTest` exception to skip a test.
+  (:issue:`1034053`.)
+  It will now use 'x' for expected failures
+  and 'u' for unexpected successes when run in its verbose mode.
+  (Contributed by Benjamin Peterson.)
+
 * The :func:`is_zipfile` function in the :mod:`zipfile` module will now
   accept a file object, in addition to the path names accepted in earlier
   versions.  (Contributed by Gabriel Genellina; :issue:`4756`.)
@@ -236,6 +269,11 @@ changes, or look through the Subversion logs for all the details.
 .. ======================================================================
 .. whole new modules get described in subsections here
 
+importlib: Importing Modules
+------------------------------
+
+XXX write this
+
 ttk: Themed Widgets for Tk
 --------------------------
 
@@ -294,6 +332,16 @@ Port-Specific Changes: Mac OS X
 -----------------------------------
 
 
+Other Changes and Fixes
+=======================
+
+* The :file:`regrtest.py` script now takes a :option:`--randseed=`
+  switch that takes an integer that will be used as the random seed
+  for the :option:`-r` option that executes tests in random order.
+  The :option:`-r` option also now reports the seed that was used
+  (Added by Collin Winter.)
+
+
 .. ======================================================================
 
 Porting to Python 2.7