Mailman 3 December 2008 - Python-Dev

Hello everyone + little question around Cpython/stackless
by Pascal Chambon 28 Dec '08

28 Dec '08

Hello snakemen and snakewomen I'm Pascal Chambon, a french engineer just leaving my Telecom School, blatantly fond of Python, of its miscellaneous offsprings and of all what's around dynamic languages and high level programming concepts. I'm currently studying all I can find on stackless python, PYPY and the concepts they've brought to Python, and so far I wonder : since stackless python claims to be 100% compatible with CPython's extensions, faster, and brings lots of fun stuffs (tasklets, coroutines and no C stack), how comes it hasn't been merged back, to become the standard 'fast' python implementation ? Would I have missed some crucial point around there ? Isn't that a pity to maintain two separate branches if they actually complete each other very well ? Waiting for your lights on this subject, regards, Pascal

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VM imaging based launch optimizations for CPython?
by Mikko Ohtamaa 26 Dec '08

26 Dec '08

Hi fellow snakemen and lizard ladies, We have been recently done lots of Python work on Nokia Series 60 phones and even managed to roll out some commercial Python based applications. In the future we plan to create some iPhone Python apps also. Python runs fine in phones - after it has been launched. Currently the biggest issue preventing the world dominance of Python based mobile applications is the start up time. We cope with the issue by using fancy splash screens and progress indicators, but it does't cure the fact that it takes a minute to show the main user interface of the application. Most of the time is spend in import executing opcodes and forming function and class structures in memory - something which cannot be easily boosted. Now, we have been thinking. Maemo has fork() based Python launcher ( http://blogs.gnome.org/johan/2007/01/18/introducing-python-launcher/) which greatly speed ups the start up time by holding Python in memory all the time. We cannot afford such luxury on Symbian and iPhone, since we do not control the operating system. So how about this 1. A Python application is launched normally 2. After VM has initialized module importing and reached a static launch state (meaning that the state is same on every launch) the VM state is written on to disk 3. Application continues execution and starts doing dynamic stuff 4. On the following launches, special init code is used which directly blits VM image from disk back to memory and we have reached the static state again without going whoops of executing import related opcodes 5. Also, I have heard a suggestion that VM image could be defragmented and analyzed offline Any opinions? Cheers, Mikko -- Mikko Ohtamaa Red Innovation Ltd. Oulu, Finland http://www.redinnovation.com

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Re: [Python-Dev] VM imaging based launch optimizations for CPython?
by Mikko Ohtamaa 26 Dec '08

26 Dec '08

On Mon, Dec 22, 2008 at 12:09 PM, Erno Kuusela <erno(a)iki.fi> wrote: > > unexec probably work out of the box on symbian, but...: > > http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-May/035727.html > > unexec() is pretty much what I was looking for. However, looks like its old hack from 80s and cannot be applied as is to the modern environment. Basically unexec() dumps the running application code (not specific to any interpreter) and data segments out as a.out binary. 1) Generating a binary file is not possible on Symbian and iPhone environments, because all binaries must be signed - however, we can probably use a generic stub exe which loads data segment only 2) a.out format is deprecated 3) Dynamic DLLs are not managed - basically a show stopper I hope I could find someone find enough OS fu to tell whether this is possible with DLLs at all and what data pointers must be patched on each unexec() call. -Mikko

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Summary of Python tracker Issues
by Python tracker 26 Dec '08

26 Dec '08

ACTIVITY SUMMARY (12/19/08 - 12/26/08) Python tracker at http://bugs.python.org/ To view or respond to any of the issues listed below, click on the issue number. Do NOT respond to this message. 2295 open (+38) / 14279 closed (+12) / 16574 total (+50) Open issues with patches: 776 Average duration of open issues: 701 days. Median duration of open issues: 2752 days. Open Issues Breakdown open 2277 (+38) pending 18 ( +0) Issues Created Or Reopened (51) _______________________________ IDLE Code Caching Windows 12/19/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4691 reopened amaury.forgeotdarc [PATCH] msvc9compiler raises IOError when no compiler found inst 12/19/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4702 created pjenvey patch Syntax error in sample code for enumerate in documentation. 12/20/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4703 created trenholmes Update pybench for python 3.0 12/20/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4704 created marketdickinson patch python3.0 -u: unbuffered stdout 12/20/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4705 created haypo try to build a C module, but don't worry if it doesn't work 12/20/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4706 created zooko round() shows undocumented behaviour 12/20/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4707 created dingo patch os.pipe should return inheritable descriptors (Windows) 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4708 created castironpi Mingw-w64 and python on windows x64 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4709 created cdavid patch [PATCH] zipfile.ZipFile does not extract directories properly 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4710 created faw patch Wide literals in the table of contents overflow in documentation 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4711 created scottdial Document pickle behavior for subclasses of dicts/lists 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4712 created georg.brandl Installing sgmlop can crash xmlrpclib 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4713 created cito patch print opcode stats at the end of pybench runs 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4714 created pitrou patch optimize bytecode for conditional branches 12/21/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4715 created pitrou patch Python 3.0 halts on shutdown when settrace is set 12/22/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4716 created fabioz execfile conversion is not correct 12/22/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4717 created fabioz wsgiref package totally broken 12/22/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4718 created hdima patch sys.exc_clear() not flagged in any way 12/22/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4719 created fabioz Extension function optional argument specification | causes Runt 12/22/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4720 created pearu pythonw.exe crash in GUI application(PythonWX) 12/22/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4721 created george _winreg.QueryValue fault while reading mangled registry values 12/22/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4722 created malicious.wizard os.path.basename error on directory names with numbers 12/22/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4723 created kle_py setting f_exc_traceback aborts in debug builds 12/22/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4724 created benjamin.peterson reporting file locations in egg (and other package) files 12/22/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4725 created rocky doctest gets line numbers wrong due to quotes in comments 12/22/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4726 created guyer patch pickle/copyreg doesn't support keyword only arguments in __new__ 12/23/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4727 created erickt Endianness and universal builds problems 12/23/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4728 created cdavid Documentation under 'pass' statement talks about exception very 12/23/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4729 created orsenthil cPickle corrupts high-unicode strings 12/23/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4730 created njs suggest change to "Failed to find the necessary bits to build th 12/23/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4731 created mkc Object allocation stress leads to segfault on RHEL 12/23/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4732 created ajg Add a "decode to declared encoding" version of urlopen to urllib 12/23/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4733 created ajaksu2 patch broken link for 2.5.3 doc download 12/24/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4734 created quiver An error occurred during the installation of assembly 12/24/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4735 created rwpjr66 io.BufferedRWPair.closed broken; tries to call bool writer.close 12/24/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4736 created semanticist documentation and noddy*.c 12/24/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4737 created exe Patch to make zlib-objects better support threads 12/24/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4738 created ebfe patch [patch] Let users do help('@') and so on for confusing syntax co 12/24/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4739 created alsuren patch pickle test for protocol 3 (HIGHEST_PROTOCOL in py3k) 12/24/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4740 created ocean-city patch, easy winsound.SND_PURGE has no effect 12/24/08 CLOSED http://bugs.python.org/issue4741 created Ultrasick 3.0 distutils byte-compiling -> Syntax error: unknown encoding: 12/24/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4742 created sjmachin intra-pkg multiple import (import local1, local2) not fixed 12/25/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4743 created sjmachin asynchat documentation needs to be more precise 12/25/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4744 created beazley socket.send obscure error message 12/25/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4745 created Luther Misguiding wording 3.0 c-api reference 12/25/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4746 created ebfe SyntaxError executing a script containing non-ASCII characters i 12/26/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4747 created gagenellina yield expression vs lambda 12/26/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4748 created georg.brandl Issue with RotatingFileHandler logging handler on Windows 12/26/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4749 created mramahi77 tarfile keeps excessive dir structure in compressed files 12/26/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4750 created techtonik patch Patch for better thread support in hashlib 12/26/08 http://bugs.python.org/issue4751 created ebfe patch Issues Now Closed (27) ______________________ ctypes function pointer enhancements 349 days http://bugs.python.org/issue1797 haypo patch [distutils] - error when processing the "--formats=tar" option 340 days http://bugs.python.org/issue1885 techtonik patch IDLE "find in files" output not formatted optimally 206 days http://bugs.python.org/issue2996 loewis patch speedup some comparisons 190 days http://bugs.python.org/issue3106 pitrou patch Cannot start wsgiref simple server in Py3k 163 days http://bugs.python.org/issue3348 pitrou patch create a numbits() method for int and long types 148 days http://bugs.python.org/issue3439 marketdickinson patch, needs review wsgiref.simple_server fails to run demo_app 107 days http://bugs.python.org/issue3795 pitrou Tkinter cannot find Tcl/Tk on Mac OS X 79 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4017 benjamin.peterson library.pdf - Section 17.6.4 Examples - Multiprocessing - Format 62 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4162 benjamin.peterson library/turtle.rst does not format properly in PDF mode 62 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4169 benjamin.peterson 2to3 drops executable bit with --write 15 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4602 benjamin.peterson patch Add Mac OS X Disk Images to Python.org homepage 10 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4627 benjamin.peterson test_bad_address in test_urllib2_localnet often fails 7 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4666 rpetrov Typo in PyObjC URL on "GUI Programming on the Mac" 3 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4689 loewis UnicodeEncodeError in license() 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4700 amaury.forgeotdarc Syntax error in sample code for enumerate in documentation. 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4703 benjamin.peterson execfile conversion is not correct 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4717 benjamin.peterson sys.exc_clear() not flagged in any way 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4719 benjamin.peterson Extension function optional argument specification | causes Runt 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4720 benjamin.peterson pythonw.exe crash in GUI application(PythonWX) 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4721 loewis os.path.basename error on directory names with numbers 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4723 loewis reporting file locations in egg (and other package) files 1 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4725 loewis Documentation under 'pass' statement talks about exception very 1 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4729 benjamin.peterson broken link for 2.5.3 doc download 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4734 loewis io.BufferedRWPair.closed broken; tries to call bool writer.close 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4736 benjamin.peterson documentation and noddy*.c 0 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4737 benjamin.peterson winsound.SND_PURGE has no effect 2 days http://bugs.python.org/issue4741 georg.brandl Top Issues Most Discussed (10) ______________________________ 23 wsgiref package totally broken 4 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue4718 23 round() shows undocumented behaviour 6 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue4707 10 range objects becomes hashable after attribute access 7 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue4701 10 Added clearerr() to clear EOF state 613 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue1706039 9 sys.exc_clear() not flagged in any way 0 days closed http://bugs.python.org/issue4719 6 zipfile returns string but expects binary 16 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue4621 5 Get rid of more refercenes to __cmp__ 71 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue1717 5 subprocess is not EINTR-safe 1500 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue1068268 4 os.path.basename error on directory names with numbers 0 days closed http://bugs.python.org/issue4723 4 Permit to easily use distutils "--formats=tar,gztar,bztar" on a 340 days open http://bugs.python.org/issue1886

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test message - please ignore
by skip＠pobox.com 25 Dec '08

25 Dec '08

Merry Christmas everyone. Still, just hit 'd'. I'm testing the mpo spam filter. Skip

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Should there be a way or API for retrieving from a code object a loader method and package file where the code comes from?
by Rocky Bernstein 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

Now that there is a package mechanism (are package mechanisms?) like zipimporter that bundle source code into a single file, should the notion of a "file" location should be adjusted to include the package and/or importer? Is there a standard API or routine which can extract this information given a code object? A use case here I am thinking of here is in a stack trace or a debugger, or a tool which wants to show in great detail information from a code object possibly via a frame. For example does this come from a zipped egg? And if so, which one? For concreteness, here is what I did and here's what I saw. Select one of the zipimporter eggs at http://code.google.com/p/pytracer and install one of these. I did this on GNU/Linux and Python 2.5 and I look at the co_filename of one of the methods: >>> import tracer >>> tracer.__dict__['size'].func_code.co_filename 'build/bdist.linux-i686/egg/tracer.py' But there is no file called "build/bdist.linux-686/egg/tracer.py" in the filesystem. Instead there is a member "tracer.py" inside /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/tracer-0.1.0-py2.5.egg'. It's possible I caused this egg to get built incorrectly or that setuptools has a bug which entered that misleading information. However, shouldn't there be a standard way to untangle package location, loader and member inside the package? As best as I can tell, PEP 302 which discussed importer hooks and suggests a standard way to get file data. But it doesn't address a standard way to get container package and/or loader information. Also I'm not sure there *is* a standard print string way to show member inside a package. zipimporter may insert co_filename strings like: /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/tracer-0.1.0-py2.5.egg/tracer.py but the trouble with this is that it means file routines have to scan the path and notice say that /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/tracer-0.1.0-py2.5.egg is a *file*, not a directory. And a file stat/reading routine needs to understand what kind of packager that is in order to get tracer.py information. (Are there any file routines in place for doing this?) Thanks.

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[ANN] Python 2.5.4 (final)
by "Martin v. Löwis" 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

On behalf of the Python development team and the Python community, I'm happy to announce the release of Python 2.5.4 (final). Python 2.5.3 unfortunately contained an incorrect patch that could cause interpreter crashes; the only change in Python 2.5.4 relative to 2.5.4 is the reversal of this patch. 2.5.4 is the last bug fix release of Python 2.5. Future 2.5.x releases will only include security fixes. According to the release notes, about 80 bugs and patches have been addressed since Python 2.5.2, many of them improving the stability of the interpreter, and improving its portability. See the release notes at the website (also available as Misc/NEWS in the source distribution) for details of bugs fixed; most of them prevent interpreter crashes (and now cause proper Python exceptions in cases where the interpreter may have crashed before). For more information on Python 2.5.4, including download links for various platforms, release notes, and known issues, please see: http://www.python.org/2.5.4 Highlights of the previous major Python releases are available from the Python 2.5 page, at http://www.python.org/2.5/highlights.html Enjoy this release, Martin Martin v. Loewis martin(a)v.loewis.de Python Release Manager (on behalf of the entire python-dev team)

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suggest change to "Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules" message
by Mike Coleman 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

I was thrown by the "Failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules" message at the end of newer Python builds, and thought that this indicated that the Python executable itself was not built. That's arguably stupidity on my part, but I wonder if others will not trip on this, too. Would it be possible to change this wording slightly, to something like Python built, but failed to find the necessary bits to build these modules ?

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Problems compiling 2.6.1 on Solaris 10
by Ellinghaus, Lance 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

I am hoping someone can assist me. I normally don't care if the _ctypes module builds or not, but I now need to have it build. I am running Solaris 10 with Sun's C compiler under SunStudio 11. After running 'configure' and 'make', the _ctypes module fails with the following error: cc -xcode=pic32 -DNDEBUG -O -I. -I/data/python/Python-2.6.1/./Include -Ibuild/temp.solaris-2.10-sun4u-2.6/libffi/include -Ibuild/temp.solaris-2.10-sun4u-2.6/libffi -I/data/python/Python-2.6.1/Modules/_ctypes/libffi/src -I/usr/local/python/include -I. -IInclude -I./Include -I/usr/local/include -I/data/python/Python-2.6.1/Include -I/data/python/Python-2.6.1 -c /data/python/Python-2.6.1/Modules/_ctypes/_ctypes.c -o build/temp.solaris-2.10-sun4u-2.6/data/python/Python-2.6.1/Modules/_ctyp es/_ctypes.o "build/temp.solaris-2.10-sun4u-2.6/libffi/include/ffi.h", line 257: syntax error before or at: __attribute__ "build/temp.solaris-2.10-sun4u-2.6/libffi/include/ffi.h", line 257: warning: old-style declaration or incorrect type for: __attribute__ "build/temp.solaris-2.10-sun4u-2.6/libffi/include/ffi.h", line 257: warning: syntax error: empty declaration "/data/python/Python-2.6.1/Modules/_ctypes/_ctypes.c", line 187: cannot recover from previous errors cc: acomp failed for /data/python/Python-2.6.1/Modules/_ctypes/_ctypes.c Is there anything special I have to do to get it to compile under Solaris 10 and SunStudio 11? BTW: I cannot use GCC. Thank you very much, Lance

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Re: [Python-Dev] Should there be a way or API for retrieving from a code object a loader method and package file where the code comes from?
by Phillip J. Eby 23 Dec '08

23 Dec '08

At 04:00 PM 12/23/2008 +0000, Paul Moore wrote: >PPS Seriously, setuptools and the adoptions of eggs has pushed a lot >of code to be much more careful about unwarranted assumptions that >code lives in the filesystem. That's an incredibly good thing, and >very hard to do right (witness the setuptools "zip_safe" parameter >which acts as a get-out clause). Much kudos to setuptools for getting >as far as it has. And ironically, if I ever get the time to actually work on a new version of easy_install (as opposed to perpetually tweaking the old one), the default zipping and default sys.path munging will be among the first things to go. ;-) Ironically, my choice of isolated directories and zipfiles for quick-and-dirty uninstall support has ended up costing far too much, compared to if I'd just taken the time to design a decent uninstall feature. Of course, hindsight is 20-20; in order to fully understand the requirements of a problem, you sometimes have to get a rather long way towards solving it the simple, obvious... and wrong way. (And, it didn't help that I had significant time constraints pushing me in the direction of the Seemingly-Simplest-At-The-Moment Thing That Could Possibly Work.)

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