[Python-Dev] Making python C-API thread safe (try 2)

[Brian Quinlan]

> Making the individual interpreters thread safe is trivial, and
benefits
> many people, 

I'm not sure that I believe this statement. Isn't this of benefit only
to people who want to have multiple interpreter instances running
concurrently in an embedding situation? I doubt that there is an army of
people who want to do that.

> and is a necessary first step; making threads within
> interpreter thread safe is possible as well, at least if you leave
> something for the developer, as you should, as you do in every other
> programming language as well.

Of course it is possible (and would likely be of benefit to more than a
handful of Python users). The problem is that it requires effort, would
likely require massive code breakage and the locking required would
likely significantly decrease Python's single-thread performance.

Cheers,
Brian