IronPython is an implementation of the Python programming language targeting the .NET Framework and Mono. Jim Hugunin created the project and actively contributed to it up until Version 1.0 which was released on September 5, 2006. IronPython 2.0 was released on December 10, 2008. After version 1.0 it was maintained by a small team at Microsoft until the 2.7 Beta 1 release. Microsoft abandoned IronPython (and its sister project IronRuby) in late 2010, after which Hugunin left to work at Google. The project is currently maintained by a group of volunteers at GitHub. It is free and open-source software, and can be implemented with Python Tools for Visual Studio, which is a free and open-source extension for Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE. IronPython is written entirely in C#, although some of its code is automatically generated by a code generator written in Python. IronPython is implemented on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), a library running on top of the Common Language Infrastructure that provides dynamic typing and dynamic method dispatch, among other things, for dynamic languages. The DLR is part of the .NET Framework 4.0 and is also a part of Mono since version 2.4 from 2009. The DLR can also be used as a library on older CLI implementations. Status and roadmap Release 2.0, released on December 10, 2008, and updated as 2.0.3 on October 23, 2009, targets CPython 2.5. IronPython 2.0.3 is only compatible up to .NET Framework 3.5. Release 2.6, released on December 11, 2009, and updated on April 12, 2010, targets CPython 2.6. IronPython 2.6.1 versions is binary compatible only with .NET Framework 4.0. IronPython 2.6.1 must be compiled from sources to run on .NET Framework 3.5. IronPython 2.6.2, released on October 21, 2010, is binary compatible with both .NET Framework 4.0 and .NET Framework 3.5. Release 2.7 was released on March 12, 2011 and it targets CPython 2.7. Release 2.7.1 was released on October 21, 2011 and it targets CPython 2.7. Release 2.7.2.1 was released on March 13, 2012. It enables support for ZIP file format libraries, SQLite, and compiled executables. Release 2.7.4 was released on September 7, 2013. Release 2.7.5 was released on December 6, 2014 and mostly consists of bug fixes. Release 2.7.6 was released on August 21, 2016 and only consists of bug fixes. Release 2.7.7 was released on December 7, 2016 and only consists of bug fixes. Release 2.7.8 was