[Python-Dev] GIL, Python 3, and MP vs. UP

[John J Lee]

On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, Brett Cannon wrote:

> On 9/20/05, John J Lee <jjl at pobox.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 19 Sep 2005, Florian Weimer wrote:
> > 
> > > The real problem is that you can ditch most extension modules. 8-(
> > [...]
> > 
> > *Is* that a showstopper for Python 3.0, though?
> 
> Who knows.  I bet Guido doesn't even know how much breakage he is
> going to want to push.  Some people have rather strongly pointed out
> (usually after I have proposed something), breaking stuff without a
> good reason is not worth the added level of breakage for when people
> try to update code to Python 3.0.

Oh, absolutely.


> Completely changing how garbage
> collection works is not exactly a minor thing and there is the
> possibility it won't pan out.  It would really suck for everyone to
> have to learn an entirely new way of handling garbage collection and
> have there not be a perk for doing so, especially since this kind of
> change will not be directly visible to the language itself.

I didn't intend to refer to garbage collection in particular, but to
removing the GIL, thus breaking extension modules (perhaps in a
less-drastic way than implied by the copying garbage-collection proposal).


John