(original) (raw)

On 19 Nov 2013 09:33, "Tim Peters" <tim.peters@gmail.com> wrote:
\>
\> \[Antoine\]
\> > Well, sending oceans of tiny integers will also incur many system calls
\> > and additional synchronization costs, since sending data on a
\> > multiprocessing Queue has to acquire a semaphore. So it generally
\> > sounds like a bad idea, IMHO.
\> >
\> > That said, I agree with:
\> >> Since pickle intends to be "the" Python serialization format, it
\> >> really should try to be friendly for all plausible uses.
\> >
\> > I simply don't think adding a fixed 8-byte overhead is actually
\> > annoying. It's less than the PyObject overhead in 64-bit mode...
\>
\> A long-running process can legitimately put billions of items on work
\> queues, far more than could ever fit in RAM simultaneously. �Comparing
\> this to PyObject overhead makes no sense to me. �Neither does the line
\> of argument "there are several kinds of overheads, so making this
\> overhead worse too doesn't matter".
\>
\> When possible, we should strive not to add overheads that don't repay
\> their costs. �For small pickles, an 8-byte size field doesn't appear
\> to buy anything. �But I appreciate that it costs implementation effort
\> to avoid producing it in these cases.

Given that cases where the overhead matters can drop back to proto 3 if absolutely necessary, perhaps it's reasonable to just run with the current proposal?

Cheers,
Nick.

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