The only functional change in the release is that it now automatically patches imaplib's IMAP4_SSL class to fix Python Issue 5949. This is a bug that's been fixed in later Python 2.6 versions and 2.7 but still exists in Python versions that are in common use. Without fix this you may experience hangs when using SSL.

The patch is only applied if the running Python version is known to be one of the affected versions. It is applied when IMAPClient is imported.

The only other change in this release is that I've now marked IMAPClient as "production ready" on PyPI and have updated the README to match. This was prompted by a request to clarify the current status of the project and seeing that all current functionality is solid and, I don't plan to change the existing APIs in backwards-incompatible ways, I've decided to indicate the project as suitable for production use.

As always, IMAPClient can be installed from PyPI (pip install imapclient) or downloaded from the IMAPClient site. Feedback, bug reports and patches are most welcome.

• Completely new response parsing code. Complex response items like BODYSTRUCTURE and ENVELOPE are now handled properly and interaction with the Gmail and MS Exchange IMAP implementations works correctly.
• Support for the COPY command
• Support for the XLIST extension (used by Gmail)
• select_folder() now returns a parsed response containing all reported details about the selected folder.
• the return value from list_folders(), list_sub_folders() and xlist_folders() now include the IMAP folder flags and folder delimiter.
• Handling of internationalised folder names has been cleaned up. Folder names now are always returned as unicode strings.
• Many bug fixes.

Be aware that there have been several API changes with this release. See the NEWS file for further details.

IMAPClient can be installed from PyPI (pip install imapclient) or downloaded from the IMAPClient site. As always, feedback, bug reports and patches are most welcome.

Special thanks goes to Mark Hammond. He has contributed a significant amount of code and effort to this release. Incidentally, Mark is using IMAPClient as part of the backend for the Raindrop Mozilla Labs project.

So far I've found that "attached", "attachment" and "CV" all trigger the reminder. It's been well thought out in that it is visually obvious but doesn't get in the way and doesn't steal focus.

Thanks Thunderbird developers. I'm sure this will save me more than once.

A simple example that triggers the warning:

class MyClass(object):

    def __new__(cls, a, b):
        print 'MyClass.__new__', a, b
        return super(MyClass, cls).__new__(cls, a, b)

    def __init__(self, a, b):
        print 'MyClass.__init__', a, b
        super(MyClass, self).__init__(a, b)

obj = MyClass(6, 7)

This gives:

$ python2.4 simple-warning.py
MyClass.__new__ 6 7
MyClass.__init__ 6 7

$ python2.6 simple-warning.py
MyClass.__new__ 6 7
simple-warning.py:5: DeprecationWarning: object.__new__() takes no parameters
  return super(MyClass, cls).__new__(cls, a, b)
MyClass.__init__ 6 7
simple-warning.py:9: DeprecationWarning: object.__init__() takes no parameters
  super(MyClass, self).__init__(a, b)

It turns out that a change to Python for 2.6 (and 3) means that object.__new__ and object.__init__ no longer take arguments - a TypeError is raised when arguments are passed. To avoid breaking too much pre-existing code, there is a special case that will cause a DeprecationWarning instead of TypeError if both __init__ and __new__ are overridden. This is the case we were running into with our code at work.

The reason for this change seems to make enough sense: object doesn't do anything with arguments to __init__ and __new__ so it shouldn't accept them. Raising an error when arguments are passed highlights code where the code might be doing the wrong thing.

Unfortunately this change also breaks Python's multiple inheritance in a fairly serious way when cooperative super calls are used. Looking at the ticket for this change, this issue was thought about but perhaps the implications were not fully understood. Given that using super with multiple inheritance is common and "correct" practice, it would seem that this change to Python is a step backwards.

For further information see the Code page here and at the top of the plugin itself.

Install from the tarball or zip or upgrade using easy_install or pip.

If you edit a crontab with "crontab -e", cron won't reload the updated crontab immediately. Changes will be read at 1 second past the next minute boundary. For example, if you change the crontab at 10:54:32, cron will reload it at 10:55:01. This means if you're trying to test how something runs under cron and you're impatient so you set that thing to run at the next minute, you won't see it run!

I spent a good half hour chasing my tail on this one. Set the test entry to run 2 minutes ahead instead.

Since then, I've disabled anonymous ticket creation and have set up the fantastic AccountManagerPlugin which allows people to register accounts for themselves. Once someone has created an account and logged in they can create and modify tickets. I have a feeling I'm going to have to turn on the optional CAPTCHA support, but I'm willing to see how it goes for a while first.

Work on the 0.6 release is coming along. This version will fix a number issues with parsing of FETCH responses - the FETCH parsing code is being completely rewritten. This is the first time that IMAPClient will bypass most of imaplib for some functionality. It's looking like that at some point IMAPClient may not use imaplib at all.

IMAPClient can be installed from PyPI using pip install IMAPClient or easy_install IMAPClient. It can also be downloaded from the IMAPClient project page. As always, feedback and patches are most welcome.