[Python-Dev] Adding library modules to the core

[Eric S. Raymond]

Vladimir Marangozov <Vladimir.Marangozov@inrialpes.fr>:
> Guido van Rossum wrote:
> > 
> > I don't know mimectl or Vladimir's module (how does it compare to
> > mmap?).
> 
> To complement ESR:
> 
> - written 3 years ago
> - exports a file-like interface, defines 2 object types: shm & sem
> - resembles buffer but lacks the slice interface.
> - has all sysV shared memory bells & whistles + native semaphore support
> 
> http://sirac.inrialpes.fr/~marangoz/python/shm
> 
> Technically, mmap is often built on top of shared memory OS facilities.
> Adding slices + Windows code for shared mem & semaphores + a simplified
> unified interface might be a plan.

Vladimir, I suggest that the most useful thing you could do to advance
the process at this point would be to document shm in core-library style.

At the moment, core Python has nothing (with the weak and nonportable 
exception of open(..., O_EXCL)) that can do semaphores properly.  Thus
shm would address a real gap in the language.
-- 
		<a href="http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr">Eric S. Raymond</a>

Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation,
that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own defence?  Where is the
difference between having our arms in our own possession and under our
own direction, and having them under the management of Congress?  If
our defence be the *real* object of having those arms, in whose hands
can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in
our own hands?
        -- Patrick Henry, speech of June 9 1788