Mailman 3 January 2005 - Python-Dev

RE: [Python-Dev] Please help complete the AST branch
by Tony Meyer 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

> Perhaps interested parties should take up the discussion on > the compiler-sig. This isn't listed in the 'currently active' SIGs list on <http://python.org/sigs/> - is it still active, or will it now be? If so, perhaps it should be added to the list? By 'discussion on', do you mean via the wiki at <http://www.zope.org/Members/jeremy/CurrentAndFutureProjects/PythonAST>? =Tony.Meyer

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Re: Re: [Python-Dev] Will ASTbranch compile on windows yet?
by olsongt＠verizon.net 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

[TIM] > > I don't have time to join the current crusade. If there's pent-up > interest among Windows users, it would be good to say which > compiler(s) you can use, since I expect not everyone can deal with VC > 7.1 (e.g., I think Raymond Hettinger is limited to VC 6; and you said > you worked up a VC 6 patch, but didn't say whether you could use 7.1 > now). > I've attached an updated patch that gets things working against current cvs. This also includes some fixes for typos that appear to have slipped through gcc and my have caused obscure bugs in *nix as well. I'll gladly fix the MSVC 7.1 project files after someone with commit privleges merges changes from HEAD as Jeremy requested. Any windows users building based on this patch would also need to run the 'asdl_c.py' utility manually right now before compiling. Something like: C:\Src\ast-branch\dist\src\Parser>asdl_c.py -h ..\Include -c ..\Python Python.asdl I'll get a proper fix in for MSVC 7.1, but don't feel like dealing with it for the obsolete 6.0 project files. -Grant

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Will ASTbranch compile on windows yet?
by olsongt＠verizon.net 05 Jan '05

05 Jan '05

I submitted patch "[ 742621 ] ast-branch: msvc project sync" in the VC6.0 days. There were some required changes to headers as well as the project files. It had discouraged me in the past when Jeremy made calls for help on the astbranch and I wasn't even sure if the source was in a compilable state when I checked it out. I'm sure it has discouraged other windows programmers as well. -Grant

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Fwd: Thank You! :)
by Guido van Rossum 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

This really goes to all python-dev folks! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Erik Johnson <ej(a)wellkeeper.com> Date: Tue, 4 Jan 2005 11:19:15 -0700 Subject: Thank You! :) To: guido(a)python.org You probably get a number of messages like this, but here is mine... My name is Erik Johnson, and I work in Albuquerque, NM for a small company called WellKeeper, Inc. We do remote oil & gas well monitoring, and I am using Python as a replacement for Perl & PHP, both for supporting dynamic web pages as well as driving a number of non-web-based servers and data processors. I just wanted to take a moment and say "Thank you!" to you, Guido, and your team for developing Python and then so generously sharing it with the world. I know it must be a pretty thankless job sometimes. I am still a neophyte Python hacker (Pythonista?), but I have been pretty impressed with Python so far, and am looking forward to learning Python better and accomplishing more with it in near near and not too distant future. So... thanks again, Happy New Year, and best wishes to you, your family, and your Python team for 2005! (I hope you will pass these good wishes along to your team.) Sincerely, Erik Johnson -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)

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Mac questions
by Thomas Heller 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

I'm working on refactoring Python/import.c, currently the case_ok() function. I was wondering about these lines: /* new-fangled macintosh (macosx) */ #elif defined(__MACH__) && defined(__APPLE__) && defined(HAVE_DIRENT_H) Is this for Mac OSX? Does the Mac have a case insensitive file system (my experiments on the SF compile farm say no)? And finally: Is there any other way to find the true spelling of a file except than a linear search with opendir()/readdir()/closedir() ? Thomas

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Darwin's realloc(...) implementation never shrinks allocations
by Bob Ippolito 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

Quite a few notable places in the Python sources expect realloc(...) to relinquish some memory if the requested size is smaller than the currently allocated size. This is definitely not true on Darwin, and possibly other platforms. I have tested this on OpenBSD and Linux, and the implementations on these platforms do appear to relinquish memory, but I didn't read the implementation. I haven't been able to find any documentation that states that realloc should make this guarantee, but I figure Darwin does this as an "optimization" and because Darwin probably can't resize mmap'ed memory (at least it can't from Python, but this probably means it doesn't have this capability at all). It is possible to "fix" this for Darwin, because you can ask the default malloc zone how big a particular allocation is, and how big an allocation of a given size will actually be (see: <malloc/malloc.h>). The obvious place to put this would be PyObject_Realloc, because this is at least called by _PyString_Resize (which will fix <http://python.org/sf/1092502>). Should I write up a patch that "fixes" this? I guess the best thing to do would be to determine whether the fix should be used at runtime, by allocating a meg or so, resizing it to 1 byte, and see if the size of the allocation changes. If the size of the allocation does change, then the system realloc can be trusted to do what Python expects it to do, otherwise realloc should be done "cleanly" by allocating a new block (returning the original on failure, because it's good enough and some places in Python seem to expect that shrink will never fail), memcpy, free, return new block. I wrote up a small hack that does this realloc indirection to CVS trunk, and it doesn't seem to cause any measurable difference in pystone performance. Note that all versions of Darwin that I've looked at (6.x, 7.x, and 8.0b1 corresponding to publicly available WWDC 2004 Tiger code) have this "issue", but it might go away by Mac OS X 10.4 or some later release. This URL points to the sf bug and Darwin 7.7's realloc(...) implementation: http://bob.pythonmac.org/archives/2005/01/01/realloc-doesnt/ -bob

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RE: [Python-Dev] Out-of-date FAQs
by Delaney, Timothy C (Timothy) 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

Aahz wrote: > Yes. Until last July, the company I work for was still using 1.5.2. > Our current version is 2.2. I think that the FAQ should be usable for > anyone with a "reasonably current" version of Python, say at least two > major versions. IOW, answers should continue to work with 2.2 during > the lifetime of 2.4. That seems reasonable to me. Tim Delaney

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Out-of-date FAQs
by Delaney, Timothy C (Timothy) 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

While grabbing the link to the copyright restrictions FAQ (for someone on python-list) I noticed a few out-of-date FAQ entries - specifically, "most stable version" and "Why doesn't list.sort() return the sorted list?". Bug reports have been submitted (and acted on - Raymond, you work too fast ;) I think it's important that the FAQs be up-to-date with the latest idioms, etc, so as I have the time available I intend to review all the existing FAQs that I'm qualified for. As a general rule, when an idiom has changed, do we want to state both the 2.4 idiom as well as the 2.3 idiom? In the case of list.sort(), that would mean having both: for key in sorted(dict.iterkeys()): ...do whatever with dict[key]... and keys = dict.keys() keys.sort() for key in keys: ...do whatever with dict[key]... Tim Delaney

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Small fix for windows.tex
by Irmen de Jong 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

The current cvs docs failed to build for me, because of a small misspelling in the windows.tex file. Here is a patch: Index: Doc/ext/windows.tex =================================================================== RCS file: /cvsroot/python/python/dist/src/Doc/ext/windows.tex,v retrieving revision 1.10 diff -u -r1.10 windows.tex --- Doc/ext/windows.tex 30 Dec 2004 10:44:32 -0000 1.10 +++ Doc/ext/windows.tex 3 Jan 2005 23:28:20 -0000 @@ -163,8 +163,8 @@ click OK. (Inserting them one by one is fine too.) Now open the \menuselection{Project \sub spam properties} dialog. - You only need to change a few settings. Make sure \guilable{All - Configurations} is selected from the \guilable{Settings for:} + You only need to change a few settings. Make sure \guilabel{All + Configurations} is selected from the \guilabel{Settings for:} dropdown list. Select the C/\Cpp{} tab. Choose the General category in the popup menu at the top. Type the following text in the entry box labeled \guilabel{Additional Include Directories}: --Irmen

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Zipfile needs?
by Scott David Daniels 04 Jan '05

04 Jan '05

I'm hoping to add BZIP2 compression to zipfile for 2.5. My primary motivation is that Project Gutenberg seems to be starting to use BZIP2 compression for some of its zips. What other wish list things do people around here have for zipfile? I thought I'd collect input here and make a PEP. I can open a pseudo-file for STORED files in binary read mode, for example, to allow reading zip-in-zip files without fully occupying memory. -- Scott David Daniels Scott.Daniels(a)Acm.Org

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