ActivePython is the industry-standard Python distribution, available for Windows. Developers worldwide rely on ActivePython's completeness and ease-of-use, while corporate users protect their infrastructure and stay competitive with quality-assured ActivePython Business Solutions.

ActivePython is 100% compatible with the reference distribution of Python. Code tested with ActivePython will run on any Python installation that has the appropriate extensions installed.

Features

# Python Package Manager (PyPM)
ActiveState's Python extension installer and manager (PyPM); allows for easy installation and management of modules and extensions.

# Python for Windows extensions
ActivePython on Windows (x86) includes the popular PyWin32 extensions that provide bindings to much of the Windows API and to Windows COM.

# Up-to-date core extensions
ActivePython includes up-to-date build of all the common core extensions that give Python its "batteries-included" name: zlib and bzip2 for data compression, the SQLite (sqlite3) database libraries, the Tix GUI widgets for Tkinter, ElementTree for XML processing, ctypes (on supported platforms) for low-level library access, the new multiprocessing library in Python 2.6, and others. See "What's Included" in the online documentation for full details.

# Rich and complete documentation
In addition to the full core Python documentation, many additional resources are included in ActivePython:
* Andrew Kuchling's full What's New in Python series
* Python's FAQs and How-Tos
* A snapshot of the Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs).
* Mark Pilgrim's "Dive Into Python" book.
* PyWin32 Extensions Reference

# Full binary compatibility with core Python
ActivePython is fully binary compatible with python.org Python builds to ensure that 3rd-party binary extensions just work.