Python and threaded environments

[Eric S. Johansson]

at this point, I am looking more for a "is this practical/what will I get" response than an actual how to do it.

I'm looking at putting python into emailrelay.  Internally, it's POSIX threaded c++.

If I use the very high-level technique described in the documentation, will it: 
  create a single instance of Python that blocks all thread activity, 
  one instance of Python per thread, or 
  1 thread of Python per thread?

Is it possible to get one instance of Python runtime environment per thread?

Is it possible to get one Python thread to 1 C++ thread relationship?

can one toss and restart a python environment periodically in order to "fix" problems with resource leeks?


ideally, I would like to see something like one instance of Python runtime per thread so that users won't need to worry about writing thread safe code.  but most of all, I would like an incremental approach that I can gradually move into full python integration.

---eric