Change log¶

3.0.0 (2018-05-15)¶

Android Gradle plugin version 3.1 is now supported.
[BACKWARD INCOMPATIBLE] Android Gradle plugin version 2.2 is no longer supported. If you’re still using Android Studio 2.2, then we highly recommend that you upgrade to the current version 3.1. Our testing shows that it builds apps more than twice as fast, whether you’re using Chaquopy or not.
Add Python versions 2.7.15 and 3.6.5, and fix a few lesser-used standard library modules.
Update to pip version 10.0.1.
Build reliability fixes, including one for over-strict metadata parsing.
Further build speed improvements.
Improve app startup speed where a requirement is reinstalled at the same version as before.

Add ability to load native library dependencies. This is required by the newly-added packages for PyZMQ and SciPy.
Improve pip install performance.

Fix a crash reported on various devices, especially Samsung Galaxy J series phones.
Fix NumPy dependency on libc functions not present in API level 17 and earlier.
Remove debugging information from native modules. All native packages benefit from this, but especially NumPy, which is now smaller by 4 MB per ABI.
Disable upgrade notification from bundled copy of pip.

General performance improvements: the Python unit tests now run about 25% faster.
[BACKWARD INCOMPATIBLE] The import hook now only looks up names in Java if they failed to import from Python. This significantly speeds up import of large Python packages. However, it means that importing a name which exists in both languages is no longer reported as an error: instead, the value from Python will be returned.
Fix a crash on API level 15 caused by the license notification.

The Python standard library is now loaded from compiled .pyc files by default (see documentation). As a result, startup of a minimal app is now 20-30% faster with Python 2, and 50-60% faster with Python 3. (Python 3 startup is still slower than Python 2, but only by 15-20%.)
sys.stdin now returns EOF rather than blocking. If you want to run some code which takes interactive text input, you may find the console app template useful.
The write method of sys.stdout and sys.stderr now returns the character count.
Very long lines written to sys.stdout and sys.stderr are now split into slightly smaller fragments, to allow for the shorter Logcat message length limit in recent versions of Android.
Fix a multi-threading deadlock.
Apps built with an unlicensed copy of the SDK are now limited to a run-time of 5 minutes.

The following things now return reasonable values: sys.argv, sys.executable, and platform.platform().
The following modules now work correctly: sqlite3, ssl (#23), and tempfile. (Requires python.version to be 2.7.14 or 3.6.3.)
sys.stdout and sys.stderr are now directed to the Android Logcat.
Add extractPackages, and use it by default for certifi.

Python source directory locations can now be configured in the sourceSets block, just like Java.
getClass, when called on a Java object, now returns the Java object class rather than the proxy object class.
Generated static_proxy Java files no longer produce build warnings.
Ensure pip is re-run if local requirements or wheel file changes.
Add Python 2.7.14.
Include distutils and doctest modules (#20). (Requires python.version to be 2.7.14 or 3.6.3.)

Apps can now use certain native packages, including NumPy (#14), as well as pure-Python packages which aren’t available from PyPI in wheel format. To support this, the build.gradle syntax for calling pip install has been changed: please see the documentation.
Zero-initialized Java arrays can now be created in Python, by passing an integer to the array constructor rather than a sequence.

Support Android Gradle plugin versions 2.2 (#9) and 3.0 (#3).
Increase minimum API level to 15. This is the default for new apps in Android Studio 3.0, and covers 99% of active devices.
Fix array store type-checking on old Android versions.
Add java.detach, and fix several multi-threading issues.

Reflect Java class hierarchy in Python.
Represent Java exceptions with their actual classes.
Support Python unbound method syntax when calling Java methods, i.e. ClassName.method(instance, args).
Release GIL when calling Java constructors.