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On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 8:30 AM, Guido van Rossum <guido@python.org> wrote:
\> On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 6:35 PM, Nathaniel Smith <njs@pobox.com> wrote:
>> - Context is a mutable object representing a mapping
\>> - BUT it doesn't allow mutation through the MutableMapping interface;
\>> instead, the only way to mutate it is by calling Context.run and then
\>> ContextVar.set(). Funneling all 'set' operations through a single
\>> place makes it easier to do clever caching tricks, and it lets us
\>> avoid dealing with operations that we don't want here (like 'del')
\>> just because they happen to be in the MutableMapping interface.
\>> - OTOH we do implement the (read-only) Mapping interface because
\>> there's no harm in it and it's probably useful for debuggers.
\>
\>
\> I think that in essence what Victor saw is a cache consistency issue.

Yeah, that's a good way to think about it.

\> If you
\> look at the implementation section in the PEP, the ContextVar.set()
\> operation mutates \_ContextData, which is a private (truly) immutable data
\> structure that stands in for the HAMT, and the threadstate contains one of
\> these (not a Context). When you call copy\_context() you get a fresh Context
\> that wraps the current \_ContextData. Because the latter is effectively
\> immutable this is a true clone. ctx.run() manipulates the threadstate to
\> make the current \_ContextData the one from ctx, then calls the function. If
\> the function calls var.set(), this will create a new \_ContextData that is
\> stored in the threadstate, but it doesn't update the ctx. This is where the
\> current state and ctx go out of sync. Once the function returns or raises,
\> run() takes the \_ContextData from the threadstate and stuffs it into ctx,
\> resolving the inconsistency. (It then also restores the previous
\> \_ContextData that it had saved before any of this started.)
\>
\> So all in all Context is mutable but the only time it is mutated is when
\> run() returns.
\>
\> I think Yury's POV is that you rarely if ever want to introspect a Context
\> object that's not freshly obtained from copy\_context(). I'm not sure if
\> that's really true; it means that introspecting the context stored in an
\> asyncio.Task may give incorrect results if it's the currently running task.
\>
\> Should we declare it a bug? The fix would be complex given the current
\> implementation (either the PEP's pseudo-code or Yury's actual HAMT-based
\> implementation). I think it would involve keeping track of the current
\> Context in the threadstate rather than just the \_ContextData, and updating
\> the Context object on each var.set() call. And this is something that Yury
\> wants to avoid, so that he can do more caching for var.get() (IIUC).

I think the fix is a little bit cumbersome, but straightforward, and
actually \*simplifies\* caching. If we track both the \_ContextData and
the Context in the threadstate, then set() becomes something like:

def set(self, value):
\# These two lines are like the current implementation
new\_context\_data =
tstate->current\_context\_data->hamt\_clone\_with\_new\_item(key=self,
value=value)
tstate->current\_context\_data = new\_context\_data
\# Update the Context to have the new \_ContextData
tstate->current\_context->data = new\_context\_data
\# New caching: instead of tracking integer ids, we just need to
track the Context object
\# This relies on the assumption that self->last\_value is updated
every time any Context is mutated
self->last\_value = value
self->last\_context = tstate->current\_context

And then the caching in get() becomes:

def get(self):
if tstate->current\_context != self->last\_context:
\# Update cache
self->last\_value = tstate->current\_context\_data->hamt\_lookup(self)
self->last\_context = tstate->current\_context
return self->last\_value

(I think the current cache invalidation logic is necessary for a PEP
550 implementation, but until/unless we implement that we can get away
with something simpler.) So I'd say yeah, let's declare it a bug.

If it turns out that I'm wrong and there's some reason this is really
difficult, then we could consider making introspection on a
currently-in-use Context raise an error, instead of returning stale
data. This should be pretty easy, since Contexts already track whether
they're currently in use (so they can raise an error if you try to use
the same Context in two threads simultaneously).

\> We could also add extra words to the PEP's spec for run() explaining this
\> temporary inconsistency.
\>
\> I think changing the introspection method from Mapping to something custom
\> won't fix the basic issue (which is that there's a difference between the
\> Context and the \_ContextData, and ContextVar actually only manipulates the
\> latter, always accessing it via the threadstate).
\>
\> However there's another problem with the Mapping interface, which is: what
\> should it do with variables that are not set and have no default value?
\> Should they be considered to have a value equal to \_NO\_DEFAULT or
\> Token.MISSING? Or should they be left out of the keys altogether? The PEP
\> hand-waves on this issue (we didn't think of missing values when we made the
\> design).

I've been thinking this over, and I don't \*think\* there are any design
constraints that force us towards one approach or another, so it's
just about what's most convenient for users.

My preference for how missing values / defaults / etc. should be
handled is, Context acts just like a dict that's missing its mutation
methods, and ContextVar does:

class ContextVar:
\# Note: default=None instead of default=\_MAGIC\_SENTINEL\_VALUE
\# If users want to distinguish between unassigned and None, then they can
\# pass their own sentinel value. IME this is very rare though.
def \_\_init\_\_(self, name, \*, default=None):
self.name = name
self.default = default

\# Note: no default= argument here, because merging conflicting
default= values
\# is inherently confusing, and not really needed.
def get(self):
return current\_context().get(self, self.default)

Rationale:

I've never seen a thread local use case where you wanted \*different\*
default values at different calls to getattr. I've seen lots of thread
local use cases that jumped through hoops to make sure they used the
same default everywhere, either by defining a wrapper around getattr()
or by subclassing local to define fallback values.

Likewise, I've seen lots of cases where having to check for whether a
thread local attribute was actually defined or not was a nuisance, and
never any where it was important to distinguish between missing and
None.

But, just in case someone does fine such a case, we should make it
possible to distinguish. Allowing users to override the default= is
enough to do this. And the default= argument is also useful on those
occasions where someone wants a default value other than None, which
does happen occasionally. For example,
django.urls.resolvers.RegexURLResolver.\_local.populating is
semantically a bool with a default value of False. Currently, it's
always accessed by writing getattr(\_local, "populating", False). With
this approach it could instead use ContextVar("populating",
default=False) and then just call get().

Everything I just said is about the ergonomics for ContextVar users,
so it makes sense to handle all this inside ContextVar.

OTOH, Context is a low-level interface for people writing task
schedulers and debuggers, so it makes sense to keep it as simple and
transparent as possible, and "it's just like a dict" is about as
simple and transparent as it gets.

Also, this way the pseudocode is really really short.

\> Should it be possible to introspect a Context that's not the
\> current context?

I think debuggers will definitely want to be able to do things like
print Context values from arbitrary tasks.

\-n

\--
Nathaniel J. Smith -- https://vorpus.org