[Idle-dev] MUltiple Instances of IDLE

[konrad Zielinski]

Hi,

I have been experimentign with Ways to get multiple instances of IDLE
running at the same time. As a quick hack I copied PyShell.py and
changed the hard coded port Number. However I found
that my Changed code only workds when run from the libidle directory.
Any attempt ro run it from else where yeilds the following Error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in ?
ImportError: No module named run

if I cd into the libidle directory first i can run PyShell2.py
correctly. Can anyone shead any light on what is happening here ?

Now Onto My main question ....

I'm planning to patch IDLE to allow multiple instances. Is this a feture
that would be considered for addition into the distibution? The comments
at the top of rpc.py seem to suggest that limiting to a single instance
was a deliberate design decision.


My options seem to either try ports systamatically, or at random.
Random will probably work a good percentage of the time. Hoever the
issue then becomes how to recover gracefully in the event (which will
eventually occure) that it tries a port which is already being used.

As far as I understand IDLE is following a model similer to X windows
where the GUI is the server and the interpreter that is executing user
code is the client (yes / no)

My other IDLE Grip (again I will be happy to attempt a patch for this if there
is interest in having it):

Option of running IDLE with editor windows in tabs rather than
seperate windows. Personally I find tabbed interfaces easier to work
with.