New submission from Kyle Stanley <aeros...@gmail.com>:
Proposal: Deprecate the alternative process watcher implementation to ThreadedChildWatcher, MultiLoopChildWatcher. Motivation: The idea for this proposal came from a comment from Andrew Svetlov in GH-16552: "I believe after polishing ThreadedChildWatcher we can start deprecation of watchers subsystem at all, it generates more problems than solves." Although Andrew suggested the idea of deprecating the process watchers subsystem entirely, I think that it would be adequate to start with just deprecating MultiLoopChildWatcher and proceeding from there. This is because the other three watcher implementations are significantly more stable in comparison (based on number of issues), have less complex implementations, and have far more widespread usage across public repositories. I would not be opposed to deprecating the other alternative watchers as well, but MultiLoopChildWatcher likely has the most justification for removal. Details: The class MultiLoopChildWatcher has a fairly complex implementation, causes a number of issues, is fairly unstable, is rarely utilized in comparison with the rest of the watchers API. It seems to have become a significant burden on maintenance for asyncio development without providing a significant benefit to the vast majority of users. Current unresolved MultiLoopChildWatcher issues: https://bugs.python.org/issue38323 https://bugs.python.org/issue38182 https://bugs.python.org/issue37573 (3 out of the 5 open process watcher issues are caused by MultiLoopChildWatcher) GitHub code usage comparison: MultiLoopChildWatcher: https://github.com/search?l=Python&q=MultiLoopChildWatcher&type=Code (20 results) ThreadedChildWatcher: https://github.com/search?l=Python&q=ThreadedChildWatcher&type=Code (77 results) FastChildWatcher: https://github.com/search?l=Python&q=FastChildWatcher&type=Code (4,426 results) SafeChildWatcher: https://github.com/search?l=Python&q=SafeChildWatcher&type=Code (7,007 results) All of asyncio usage: https://github.com/search?l=Python&q=asyncio&type=Code (599,131 results) Note that for the above results, it also includes matches in the CPython repository and for repositories that have exact copies of Lib/asyncio/unix_events.py. Also, ThreadedChildWatcher likely has significantly less results since it's already the default watcher returned by asyncio.get_child_watcher(), so there's less need to explicitly declare it compared to the others. There are of course private repositories and non-GitHub repositories this doesn't include, but it should provide a general idea of overall usage. My experience in interacting with asyncio users is similar to the results. The process watchers subsystem seems to be minimally used compared to the rest of asyncio, with ThreadedChildWatcher likely being the most used as the default returned from `asyncio.get_child_watcher()`. I have not personally seen a realistic example of usage of MultiLoopChildWatcher outside of python/cpython, and all of the results returned on GitHub were copies of Lib/asyncio/unix_events.py or Lib/test/test_asyncio/test_subprocess.py. I would be interested in working on this issue if it is approved, as I think it would provide a significant long term reduction in maintenance for asyncio; allowing us to focus on the improvement and development of other features that benefit a far larger audience. ---------- components: asyncio messages: 355372 nosy: aeros, asvetlov, yselivanov priority: normal severity: normal status: open title: Deprecating MultiLoopChildWatcher versions: Python 3.9 _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <https://bugs.python.org/issue38591> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
