[Python-Dev] Summaries for Number 2008, First Half (original) (raw)

Calvin Spealman ironfroggy at gmail.com
Sun Nov 16 07:39:11 CET 2008

Wow, how long has this been? OK, so these aren't really the summaries. It is half-done summaries, which I've posted to the wiki for community collaboration. Anyone with a better understanding a conversation or simply the knowledge that I don't know what I'm talking about half the time, the summary can be edited easily now. I'd like to try a schedule of posting the draft to the wiki, leaving it up for edits for two weeks, and publishing the final summaries when the next summary draft is prepared and put up for review. Does that sound like a decent plan that might actually see the return of the summaries be stuck with?

The draft is at http://wiki.python.org/moin/PyDevSummaries/2008/November/FirstHalf

Of course, if you don't have time to edit this but do want to make any comments, suggestions, or corrections, or you want to suggest that any thread should be promoted from the bottom list or demoted down to it, just let me know. And the current draft is found below.

============= Announcements

This is the draft of the python-dev mailing list summaries for the first half of November 2008. Please make any corrections, improvements, or comments. The contents will be finalized at the end of the month, when the summaries' draft for the second half of November 2008 are posted. I hope to keep this schedule regularly.

========= Summaries

Looking for VCS usage scenarios

Brett Cannon solicits any use cases and scenarios that would give an understanding for the motivations in proposing Python move to or mirror officially via some distributed version control. Much discussion ensued that I didn't have the time to follow. This thread was over 100 posts, so anyone who followed it well, please give as concise an overview as you can.

Contributing thread:

Optionally using GMP to implement long if available

The suggestion of using the GMP library to implement Python's long numbers was brought in the context of an compile time option, falling back to the current in-house implementation when GMP is not available. However, the discussion points out that most distribution of Python is binary and so the LGPL issues that keep us from using GMP still apply.

Some of the conversation also suggestion various improvements to our own implementation, mostly focused on increasing size of the base long values are stored in, particularly on 64bit systems.

Contributing thread:

Fwd: Removal of GIL through refcounting removal.

Yet Another Attempt At Removing The GIL was proposed, and had a more positive reception than most of the times it has been brought up (in my memory). While the removal of the GIL has been both proposed and successfully attempted in the past, there have always been outstanding issues that keep the lock around. One of the primary issues is that of the C API and extension modules, which all expect reference counting. A technique used in IronClad, a project that provides use of CPython extensions in the IronPython implementation of the language, was suggested to provide reference counting semantics to legacy extensions, even if the internal objects no longer require them.

Contributing thread:

Using Cython for standard library?

Without much expectation that any action will actually be taken any time soon, the possibility of using Cython (and, by extension, similar solutions) was given consideration. While the benefits of these solutions are obvious, there is no particular best of breed nor yet a point of stability that a mature project might stand on. It would be exciting to one day see some variation of this happen, but that day is not today.

Contributing thread:

n.numbits: method or property?

The basic question of a proposed method or property, numbits, drew into a small discussion about the inherent assumption of binary representation of our numbers. The numbits method or property would provide the smallest number of bits required to represent a given integer.

Contributing thread:

XXX do we need a new policy?

Some concerns were raised for the number of XXX, TODO, and other types of comment markers in the Python source. While the OP appears to worry about the number of open issues this represents, the general concensus seems to conclude that any real issues have associated tickets, there is little benefit in dealing with all of these at once, and the 2000 or so of them represents nothing significant, in the first place.

Contributing thread:

DVCS PEP update

It was announced that git is being included as one of the distributed version control solutions in consideration for any proposal to move from Subversion. Some back and forth on the various questions against each option and who is representing each was also given.

Contributing thread:

Released fixes for CVE-2008-2315 for Python 2.4?

It was confirmed that an additional bugfix release of 2.4 will be made, 2.4.6 in a simultaneous release with 2.5.3. However, this accepts only security fixes so the multiprocessing module backport is not eligable.

Contributing thread:

hg branch gone?

Contributing thread:

Optimize Python long integers

Several outstanding patches to optimize int and especially long objects were benchmarked and applied to the 2.6 branch for comparison. Although they are not eligable for the bugfix releases of 2.6 or 3.0, they may be likely improvements we'll see in 2.7 and 3.1 releases in the future. However, some related and minor bug fixes to long are likely to be applied much sooner.

Contributing thread:

file open in python interpreter

Contributing thread:

My patches

Contributing thread:

compiler optimizations: collecting ideas

Contributing thread:

Python 2.5.3: call for patches

Contributing thread:

datetime and timedelta enhancement

Contributing thread:

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