====================================
PyPy v7.2.0: release of 2.7, and 3.6
====================================

The PyPy team is proud to release the version 7.2.0 of PyPy, which includes
two different interpreters:

  - PyPy2.7, which is an interpreter supporting the syntax and the features of
    Python 2.7 including the stdlib for CPython 2.7.13

  - PyPy3.6: which is an interpreter supporting the syntax and the features of
    Python 3.6, including the stdlib for CPython 3.6.9.
    
The interpreters are based on much the same codebase, thus the double
release.

With the support of Arm Holdings Ltd. and `Crossbar.io`_, this release supports
the 64-bit ``aarch64`` ARM architecture. More about the work and the
performance data around this welcome development can be found in the `blog
post`_.

This release removes the "beta" tag from PyPy3.6. While there may still be some
small corner-case incompatibilities (around the exact error messages in
exceptions and the handling of faulty codec errorhandlers) we are happy with
the quality of the 3.6 series and are looking forward to working on a Python
3.7 interpreter.

We updated our benchmark runner at https://speed.pypy.org to a more modern
machine and updated the baseline python to CPython 2.7.11. Thanks to `Baroque
Software`_ for maintaining the benchmark runner.

The CFFI-based ``_ssl`` module was backported to PyPy2.7 and updated to use
cryptography_ version 2.7. Additionally the ``_hashlib``, and ``crypt`` (or
``_crypt`` on Python3) modules were converted to CFFI. This has two
consequences. End users and packagers can more easily update these libraries
for their platform by executing ``(cd lib_pypy; ../bin/pypy _*_build.py)``.
More significantly, since PyPy itself links to fewer system shared objects
(DLLs), on platforms with a single runtime namespace like linux different CFFI
and c-extension modules can load different versions of the same shared object
into PyPy without collision (`issue 2617`_).

Until downstream providers begin to distribute c-extension builds with PyPy, we
have made packages for some common packages `available as wheels`_.

The `CFFI`_ backend has been updated to version 1.13.0. We recommend using CFFI
rather than c-extensions to interact with C, and `cppyy`_ for interacting with
C++ code.

Thanks to Anvil_, we revived the `PyPy Sandbox`_, which allows total control
over a python interpreter's interactions with the external world.

We implemented a new JSON decoder that is much faster, uses less memory, and
uses a JIT-friendly specialized dicti                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             