ANN: Python Spread Module 1.3 Released

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Wed, 31 Jul 2002 10:55:52 -0400


I've released version 1.3 of the Spread Module for Python:

    http://www.python.org/other/spread/

About the Spread Module
-----------------------

This package contains a simple Python wrapper module for the Spread
toolkit (see below).  The wrapper is compatible with Python 2.1 and
2.2.  It wraps Spread mailboxes and messages in Python objects with
appropriate methods and attributes, and turns Spread errors into
Python exceptions.  Virtually all Spread features are accessible from
Python.

About Spread
------------

>From the Spread website (http://www.spread.org):

Spread is a toolkit that provides a high performance messaging service
that is resilient to faults across external or internal networks.
Spread functions as a unified message bus for distributed
applications, and provides highly tuned application-level multicast
and group communication support.  Spread services range from reliable
message passing to fully ordered messages with delivery guarantees,
even in case of computer failures and network partitions.

Spread is designed to encapsulate the challenging aspects of
asynchronous networks and enable the construction of scalable
distributed applications, allowing application builders to focus on
the differentiating components of their application.


Changes since release 1.2
-------------------------

- Critical bugfix:  We didn't realize that the service_type argument to
  Spread's SP_receive() is an input parameter as well as an output
  parameter, and consequently didn't initialize it.  Depending on what
  trash happened to be sitting on the stack, this could cause Spread to
  deliberately drop data (a backward compatibility feature in Spread
  triggered by passing the DROP_RECV flag in service_type on input).

Enjoy!

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)