Here's the summary for the first half of September. As always,
comments and corrections are greatly appreciated!
=============
Announcements
=============
----------------------------
QOTF: Quote of the Fortnight
----------------------------
Through a cross-posting slip-up, Jean-Paul Calderone managed to
provide us with some inspiring thoughts on mailing-list archives:
One could just as easily ask why no one bothers to read mailing list
archives to see if their question has been answered before.
No one will ever know, it is just one of the mysteries of the universe.
Contributing thread:
- `[Twisted-Python] Newbie question
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068682.html>`__
-------------------------
Monthly Arlington sprints
-------------------------
Jeffrey Elkner has arranged for monthly Arlington Python sprints. See
the `Arlington sprint wiki`_ for more details.
.. _Arlington sprint wiki: http://wiki.python.org/moin/ArlingtonSprint
Contributing thread:
- `Arlington sprints to occur monthly
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068688.html>`__
=========
Summaries
=========
-----------------------------------------
Signals, threads and blocking C functions
-----------------------------------------
Gustavo Carneiro explained a problem that pygtk was running into.
Their main loop function, ``gtk_main()``, blocks forever. If there are
threads in the program, they cannot receive signals because Python
catches the signal and calls ``Py_AddPendingCall()``, relying on the
main thread to call ``Py_MakePendingCalls()``. Since with pygtk, the
main thread is blocked calling a C function, it has no way other than
polling to decide when ``Py_MakePendingCalls()`` needs to be called.
Gustavo was hoping for some sort of API so that his blocking thread
could get notified when ``Py_AddPendingCall()`` had been called.
There was a long discussion about the feasibility of this and other
solutions to his problem. One of the main problems is that almost
nothing can safely be done from a signal handler context, so some
people felt like having Python invoke arbitrary third-party code was a
bad idea. Gustavo was reasonably confident that he could write to a
pipe within that context, which was all he needed to do to solve his
problem, but Nick Maclaren explained in detail some of the problems,
e.g. writing proper synchronization primitives that are signal-handler
safe.
Jan Kanis suggested that threads in a pygtk program should
occasionally check the signal handler flags and calls PyGTK's callback
to wake up the main thread. But Gustavo explained that things like the
GnomeVFS library have their own thread pools and know nothing about
Python so can't make such a callback.
Adam Olsen that Python could create a single non-blocking pipe for all
signals. When a signal was handled, the signal number would be written
to that pipe as a single byte. Third-party libraries, like pygtk,
could poll the appropriate file descriptor, waking up and handing
control back to Python when a signal was received. There were some
disadvantages to this approach, e.g. if there is a large burst of
signals, some of them would be lost, but folks seemed to think that
these kinds of things would not cause many real-world problems.
Gustavo and Adam then worked out the code in a little more detail.
The `Py_signal_pipe patch`_ was posted to SourceForge.
.. _Py_signal_pipe patch: http://bugs.python.org/1564547
Contributing thread:
- `Signals, threads, blocking C functions
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068569.html>`__
------------------------
API for str.rpartition()
------------------------
Raymond Hettinger pointed out that in cases where the separator was
not found, ``str.rpartition()`` was putting the remainder of the
string in the wrong spot, e.g. ``str.rpartition()`` worked like::
'axbxc'.rpartition('x') == ('axb', 'x', 'c')
'axb'.rpartition('x') == ('a', 'x', 'b')
'a'.rpartition('x') == ('a', '', '') # should be ('', '', 'a')
Thus code that used ``str.rpartition()`` in a loop or recursively
would likely never terminate. Raymond checked in a fix for this,
spawning an enormous discussion about how the three bits
``str.rpartition()`` returns should be named. There was widespread
disagreement on which side was the "head" and which side was the
"tail", and the only unambiguous one seemed to be "left, sep, right".
Raymond and others were not as happy with this version because it was
no longer suggestive of the use cases, but it looked like this might
be the best compromise.
Contributing threads:
- `Problem withthe API for str.rpartition()
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068565.html>`__
- `Fwd: Problem withthe API for str.rpartition()
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068615.html>`__
---------------
Unicode Imports
---------------
Kristján V. Jónsson submitted a `unicode import patch`_ that would
allow unicode paths in sys.path and use the unicode file API on
Windows. It got a definite "no" from the Python 2.5 release managers
since it was already too late in the release process. Nonetheless
there was a long discussion about whether or not it should be
considered a bug or a feature. Martin v. Löwis explained that it was
definitely a feature because it would break existing introspection
tools expecting things like __file__ to be 8-bit strings (not unicode
strings as they would be with the patch).
.. _unicode import patch: http://bugs.python.org/1552880
Contributing thread:
- `Unicode Imports
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068686.html>`__
-------------------------
Exception and __unicode__
-------------------------
Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk reported a `TypeError from unicode()`_ when
applied to an Exception class. Brett Cannon explained the source of
this: BaseException defined a ``__unicode__`` descriptor which was
complaining when it was handed a class, not an instance. The easiest
solution seemed to be the best for Python 2.5: simply rip out the
``__unicode__`` method entirely. M.-A. Lemburg suggested that for
Python 2.6 this should be fixed by introducing a tp_unicode slot.
.. _TypeError from unicode(): http://bugs.python.org/1551432
Contributing thread:
- `2.5 status
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068607.html>`__
--------------------------
Slowdown in inspect module
--------------------------
Fernando Perez reported an enormous slowdown in Python 2.5's inspect
module. Nick Coghlan figured out that this was a result of
``inspect.findsource()`` calling ``os.path.abspath()`` and
``os.path.normpath()`` repeatedly on the module's file name. Nick
provided a `patch to speed things up`_ by caching the absolute,
normalized file names.
.. _patch to speed things up: http://bugs.python.org/1553314
Contributing thread:
- `inspect.py very slow under 2.5
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068656.html>`__
--------------------------------
Cross-platform float consistency
--------------------------------
Andreas Raab asked about trying to minimize some of the cross-platform
differences in floating-point calcuations, by using something like
fdlibm_. Tim Peters pointed him to a `previous thread on this issue`_
and suggested that best route was probably to package a Python wrapper
for fdlibm_ and see how much interest there was.
.. _fdlibm: http://www.netlib.org/fdlibm/
.. _previous thread on this issue:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-July/290164.html
Contributing thread:
- `Cross-platform math functions?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068599.html>`__
-----------------------------------
Refcounting and errors in functions
-----------------------------------
Mihai Ibanescu pointed out that refcount status for functions that can
fail is generally poorly documented. Greg Ewing explained that
refcounting behavior should be independent of whether the call
succeeds or fails, but it was clear that this was not always the case.
Mihai promised to file a low-severity bug so that this problem
wouldn't be lost.
Contributing thread:
- `Py_BuildValue and decref
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068708.html>`__
------------
Python 2.3.6
------------
Barry Warsaw offered to push out a Python 2.3.6 if folks were
interested in getting some bugfixes out to the platforms which were
still running Python 2.3. After an underwhelming response, he
retracted the offer.
Contributing threads:
- `Interest in a Python 2.3.6?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-August/068520.html>`__
- `Interest in a Python 2.3.6?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068731.html>`__
- `Python 2.4.4 was: Interest in a Python 2.3.6?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068737.html>`__
-----------------------------------
Effbot Python library documentation
-----------------------------------
Johann C. Rocholl asked about the status of http://effbot.org/lib/,
Fredrik Lundh's alternative format and rendering for the Python
library documentation. Fredrik indicated that due to the pushback from
some folks on python-dev, they've been working mainly "under the
radar" on this. (At least until some inconsiderate soul put them in
the summary...) ;-)
Contributing threads:
- `That library reference, yet again
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-August/068556.html>`__
- `That library reference, yet again
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068561.html>`__
================
Deferred Threads
================
- `IronPython and AST branch
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068778.html>`__
==================
Previous Summaries
==================
- `Py2.5 issue: decimal context manager misimplemented, misdesigned,
and misdocumented
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068564.html>`__
- `Error while building 2.5rc1 pythoncore_pgo on VC8
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068582.html>`__
- `gcc 4.2 exposes signed integer overflows
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068602.html>`__
- `no remaining issues blocking 2.5 release
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068606.html>`__
- `new security doc using object-capabilities
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068673.html>`__
===============
Skipped Threads
===============
- `A test suite for unittest
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068558.html>`__
- `Fwd: [Python-checkins] r51674 - python/trunk/Misc/Vim/vimrc
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068562.html>`__
- `Weekly Python Patch/Bug Summary
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068567.html>`__
- `Windows build slave down until Tuesday-ish
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068573.html>`__
- `[Python-checkins] TRUNK IS UNFROZEN, available for 2.6 work if you
are so inclined
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068605.html>`__
- `Exception message for invalid with statement usage
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068665.html>`__
- `buildbot breakage
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068671.html>`__
- `Change in file() behavior in 2.5
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068678.html>`__
- `'with' bites Twisted
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068681.html>`__
- `What windows tool chain do I need for python 2.5 extensions?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068709.html>`__
- `2.5c2
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068742.html>`__
- `_PyGILState_NoteThreadState should be static or not?
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068743.html>`__
- `BRANCH FREEZE: release25-maint, 00:00UTC 12 September 2006
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068745.html>`__
- `datetime's strftime implementation: by design or bug
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068747.html>`__
- `Subversion 1.4
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068761.html>`__
- `RELEASED Python 2.5 (release candidate 2)
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068766.html>`__
- `Maybe we should have a C++ extension for testing...
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068768.html>`__
- `.pyc file has different result for value "1.79769313486232e+308"
than .py file
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068769.html>`__
- `release is done, but release25-maint branch remains near-frozen
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068773.html>`__
- `fun threading problem
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068774.html>`__
- `Thank you all
<http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2006-September/068779.html>`__
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