The last V2 Python update has been released along with a corresponding update to the incompatible V3.

Python has a slight problem in that it has a widely used version 2 and a relatively new (2008) non-backwards compatible version 3. Any attempt to move a language forward in a non-backward compatible way is a dangerous time in its development.

Python 2 has now reached a milestone. The latest version, 2.7.1, is the last major revision of the version 2 line of Python and marks the move to maintenance only. Many of its new features were first released in version 3 so in a sense you can consider it to be a backward compatible extension in version 3's direction. New features include:

• An ordered dictionary type
• New unittest features including test skipping, new assert methods, and test discovery
• A much faster io module
• Automatic numbering of fields in the str.format() method
• Float repr improvements backported from 3.x
• Tile support for Tkinter
• A backport of the memoryview object from 3.x
• Set literals
• Set and dictionary comprehensions
• Dictionary views
• New syntax for nested with statements
• The sysconfig module

Also released at the same time is Python 3.1.3 and it includes some of the same improvements:

• An ordered dictionary type
• Various optimizations to the int type
• New unittest features including test skipping and new assert methods.
• A much faster io module
• Tile support for Tkinter
• A pure Python reference implementation of the import statement
• New syntax for nested with statements

More information and downloads from: http://www.python.org/