Re: [Python-ideas] The async API of the future: Reactors

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 03:49:36PM -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:

[Responding to yet another message in the original thread]

On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Trent Nelson trent@snakebite.org wrote:

...

It's the best way to do it.  There should really be a libevent-type
library (libiocp?) that leverages IOCP where possible, and fakes it
when not using a half-sync/half-async pattern with threads and epoll
or kqueue on Linux and FreeBSD, falling back to processes and poll
on everything else (NetBSD, OpenBSD and HP-UX (the former two not
having robust-enough pthread implementations, the latter not having
anything better than select or poll)).

In which category does OS X fall?

Oh, how'd I forget about OS X! At the worst, it falls into the FreeBSD kqueue camp, having both a) kqueue and b) a performant pthread implementation.

However, with the recent advent of Grand Central Dispatch, it's actually on par with Windows' IOCP+threadpool offerings, which is pretty cool. (And apparently there are GCD ports in the works for Solaris, Linux and... Windows?!)

Will reply to the other questions in a separate response.

Trent.