[Python-Dev] ActiveState & fork & Perl

[Gordon McMillan]

David Ascher wrote:

> On Mon, 7 Jun 1999, Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
> > True enough, but as Guido pointed out, enabling threads by default would
> > immediately make the Mac a second-class citizen.  

> I'm not sure I buy that argument.  There are already thread demos in
> the current directory, and no one complains.  The windows builds are
> already threaded by default, and it's not caused any problems that I
> know of. Think of it like enabling the *new* module. =)  
> 
> > Has there been an assessment of how hard it would be to add thread
> > support to the Mac?
> 
> That's an interesting question, especially since ActiveState lists
> it as a machine w/ threads and w/o fork().

Not a Mac programmer, but I recall that when Steve Jobs came back, 
they published a schedule that said threads would be available a 
couple releases down the road. Schedules only move one way, so I'd 
guess ActiveState is premature.

Perhaps Christian's stackless Python would enable green threads...

(And there are a number of things in the standard distribution which 
don't work on Windows, either; fork and select()ing on file fds).

- Gordon