[Python-Dev] Import lock considered mysterious (original) (raw)

Antoine Pitrou solipsis at pitrou.net
Fri Jul 22 17:07:07 CEST 2011

>See http://bugs.python.org/issue9260 > >There's a patch there but it needs additional sophistication to remove >deadlocks when doing concurrent circular imports.

I don't think that approach can work, as PEP 302 loaders can currently assume the global import lock is being held when they run... and in general, there are too many global data structures in sys that need to be protected by code that uses such things.

Some of the comments in the issue are about that. The global import lock could still protect those structures when needed. It just doesn't have to be held when executing a module's body.

Between that and the timeout, the mysteriousness could be completely done away with, without throwing a monkey wrench into the current import mechanisms.

Isn't the current import mechanism already a monkey wrench?

Regards

Antoine.

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