[Python-Dev] should a module's thread safety be documented?

[Guido van Rossum]

> A bit late for 2.1alpha1, but it just occurred to me that perhaps there
> should be an annotation in the documentation that indicates whether or not a
> module is thread-safe.  For example, many functions in fileinput rely on a
> module global called _state.  It strikes me that this module is not likely
> to be thread-safe, yet the documentation doesn't appear to mention this,
> certainly not in an obvious fashion.
> 
> Anyone for adding \notthreadsafe{} and \threadsafe{} macros to the litany of
> LaTex macros in Fred's arsenal?  This would make documenting these
> properties both easy and consistent across modules.

It's hard to say whether a *whole module* is threadsafe.  E.g. in the
fileinput example, there's the clear implication that if you use this
in multiple threads, you should instantiate your own FileInput
instances, and then you're totally thread-safe.  Clearly the semantics
of the module-global functions are thread-unsafe though.

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