It is proposed to incorporate the work of Guilherme Polo in the 2009
Google Summer of Code into idlelib. Polo's enhancements have been
extensively tested for a year through being included with VPython.

Here is a description from NEWS.txt:

In December 2008 David Scherer created an alternative version
of IDLE to fix some long-standing problems. In the 2009 Google
Summer of Code Guilherme Polo continued this work, assisted by
Bruce Sherwood. Important new fixes and features include:

 * A configuration preference that permits writing and running
   test programs from the editor without having to save the file
   (you're warned upon quitting whether to save).

 * Bringing the shell window forward in case of an error (because
   novices often failed to realize why their program had stopped).
 * A revert plug-in (FileRevert.py).

 * Unreliable and slow termination of user program on Windows;
   now you can re-run without first closing the graphics window.

 * Missing preferences and other menus on Macintosh.

 * Use any port for RPC server, so multiple instances of VIDLE
   can run at the same time without interference.

Polo submitted patches at the end of the summer of 2009, found at
code.google.com/p/google-summer-of-code-2009-python/downloads/list
This was for the Python 2.X series.

Because the mechanism was not clear for getting these patches
into the version of IDLE distributed with Python, the patched
version has been distributed with VPython (vpython.org) with
the name VIDLE to attempt to avoid confusion with IDLE. It is
installed into site-packages.

In October 2010 Bruce Sherwood manually applied Polo's patches
to the idlelib found at 
   svn.python.org/projects/python/tags/r312/Lib/idlelib 

In addition to applying Polo's patches, the new code uses the new
dot addressing of modules (e.g. from . import PyShell). Except for
having to change one absolute address in the use of __import__ in
PyShell.py, this version can work either in Python31/Lib/idlelib or
in Python31/Lib/site-packages/vidle. This VIDLE will be included in
the installer for VPython for Python 3.