[Python-Dev] issue 9141, finalizers and gc module (original) (raw)

Maciej Fijalkowski fijall at gmail.com
Tue Apr 17 23:29:19 CEST 2012

On Tue, Apr 17, 2012 at 8:30 PM, Antoine Pitrou <solipsis at pitrou.net> wrote:

On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 17:22:57 +0000 Kristján Valur Jónsson <kristjan at ccpgames.com> wrote: > > > > We are all consenting adults. Everything is allowed - you just have to live with > > the consequences. > > Well, we specifically decided that objects with del methods that are part of a cycle cannot be run. > The same reasoning was applied to generators, if they are in a certain state. > What makes iobase so special that its 'close' method can be run even if it is part of a cycle?

The reason is that making file objects uncollectable when they are part of a reference cycle would be a PITA and a serious regression for many applications, I think. > Why not allow it for all objects, then? I'm not the author of the original GC design. Perhaps it was deliberately conservative at the time? I think PyPy has a more tolerant solution for finalizers in reference cycles, perhaps they can explain it here. Regards Antoine.

PyPy breaks cycles randomly. I think a pretty comprehensive description of what happens is here:

http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2008/02/python-finalizers-semantics-part-1.html http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2008/02/python-finalizers-semantics-part-2.html

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