[Python-ideas] The async API of the future: Reactors

[Trent Nelson]

On Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 03:49:36PM -0700, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> [Responding to yet another message in the original thread]
> 
> On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 9:45 PM, Trent Nelson <trent at snakebite.org> wrote:
> >     It's the best way to do it.  There should really be a libevent-type
> >     library (libiocp?) that leverages IOCP where possible, and fakes it
> >     when not using a half-sync/half-async pattern with threads and epoll
> >     or kqueue on Linux and FreeBSD, falling back to processes and poll
> >     on everything else (NetBSD, OpenBSD and HP-UX (the former two not
> >     having robust-enough pthread implementations, the latter not having
> >     anything better than select or poll)).
> 
> In which category does OS X fall?

    Oh, how'd I forget about OS X!  At the worst, it falls into the
    FreeBSD kqueue camp, having both a) kqueue and b) a performant
    pthread implementation.

    However, with the recent advent of Grand Central Dispatch, it's
    actually on par with Windows' IOCP+threadpool offerings, which is
    pretty cool.  (And apparently there are GCD ports in the works for
    Solaris, Linux and... Windows?!)

    Will reply to the other questions in a separate response.

        Trent.