[Python-Dev] RE: The Python interpreter is not fully thread-safe.

[Michael Chermside]

Tim Peters wrote:
> Under that meaning (which I believe Guido also had in mind when he wrote
> this section), Python's C API is indeed not thread-safe.  We don't have to
> apologize for that, though, we just have to spell out what's needed in the
> presence of threads.

Martin v. Löwis adds:
> This request was triggered by a question from c.l.p: "When will Python
> be thread-safe". It was not obvious that the poster was referring to
> the API docs, so the initial responses all were "Python *is* thread-safe".

Please note that what was confusing the the original poster was
almost certainly the docs saying that "Python" was not thread-safe
when what was really intended was, as Tim points out, that Python's 
C api was not thread safe. Using the term "free threading" is fine,
but also make it clear that it's the _C api_ we're talking about,
because Python itself (ie, programs coded in pure Python) _IS_ 
threadsafe.

-- Michael Chermside