[Python-Dev] ActiveState & fork & Perl

[David Ascher]

On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, Skip Montanaro wrote:

> That's not quite the same thing.  The new module simply exposes some
> normally closed-from-Python-code data structures to the Python programmer.
> Enabling threads requires some support from the underlying runtime system.
> If that was already in place, I suspect the Mac binaries would come with the
> thread module enabled by default, yes?

I'm not denying that.  It's just that there are lots of things which fall
into that category, like (to take a pointed example =), os.fork().  We
don't have a --with-fork configure flag.  We expose to the Python
programmer all of the underlying OS that is 'wrapped' as long as it's
reasonably portable.  I think that most unices + win32 is a reasonable
approximation of 'reasonably portable'.  And in fact, this change might
motivate someone with Mac fervor to explore adding Python support of Mac
threads.

--david