Stackless Python, eventual merge?
Greg Ewing
see_reply_address at something.invalid
Wed Sep 18 19:43:44 EDT 2002
Martin v. Löwis wrote:
> Depends on your notion of "danger"; I usually associate it with fear
> and uncertainty :-)
Well, I *do* experience fear and uncertainty when
I find that the normally secure and predictable
environment of Python suddenly starts crashing
on me. It takes all the fun out of things.
> If you know it can crash when you do certain things, and you document
> that limitation, there is no danger. There are already ways to crash
> Python, the dlmodule being an example in the core distribution.
The problem in this case is that it's not something
*I* do which is going to cause the crash, it's
something done by the internals of some piece of
C code that I know nothing about. Something which
is not going to be documented, because it's a
perfectly legitimate and unremarkable thing for
C code to do.
So, the only way to find out whether a particular
extension is safe to use in Stackless is to try
it. And that only gives a definite answer when
the answer is "no, it's not safe". If it doesn't
crash, I still can't be confident that it won't
crash at some time in the future.
That's why I say that I would be nervous about
using Stackless. Not to say that would stop me
from using it, but I'd feel nervous while I was
doing it! :-)
> Also, readers should notice that your example requires Stackless to be
> used:
Yes, I understand that, and I acknowledge that it
won't cause any harm to have Stackless in the core
if the Stackless stuff is switched off by default.
--
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg
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