[Python-Dev] Twisted Isn't Specific (was Re: Trial balloon: microthreads library in stdlib) (original) (raw)

Josiah Carlson jcarlson at uci.edu
Fri Feb 16 07:48:03 CET 2007

Jean-Paul Calderone <exarkun at divmod.com> wrote:

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 13:55:31 -0800, Josiah Carlson <jcarlson at uci.edu> wrote: > >Jean-Paul Calderone <exarkun at divmod.com> wrote: > [snip] >> >> Now if we can only figure out a way for everyone to benefit from this without >> tying too many brains up in knots. :) > >Whenever I need to deal with these kinds of things (in wxPython >specifically), I usually set up a wxTimer to signal >asyncore.poll(timeout=0), but I'm lazy, and rarely need significant >throughput in my GUI applications. And I guess you also don't mind that on OS X this is often noticably broken? :)

I don't own a Mac, and so far, of the perhaps dozen or so Mac users of the software that does this, I've heard no reports of it being broken.

From what I understand, wxTimers work on all supported platforms (which includes OSX), and if asyncore.poll() is broken on Macs, then someone should file a bug report. If it's asyncore's fault, assign it to me, otherwise someone with Mac experience needs to dig into it.

> [snip] >Protocol support is hit and miss. NNTP in Python could be better, but >that's not an asyncore issue (being that nntplib isn't implemented using >asyncore), that's an "NNTP in Python could be done better" issue. Is it >worth someone's time to patch it, or should they just use Twisted? Well, >if we start abandoning stdlib modules, "because they can always use >Twisted", then we may as well just ship Twisted with Python.

We could always replace the stdlib modules with thin compatibility layers based on the Twisted protocol implementations. It's trivial to turn an asynchronous API into a synchronous one. I think you are correct in marking this an unrelated issue, though.

If the twisted folks (or anyone else) want to implement a "shim" that pretends to be nntplib, it's their business whether calling twisted.internet.monkeypatch.nntplib() does what the name suggests. :)

That is to say, I don't believe anyone would be terribly distraught if there was an easy way to use Twisted without drinking the kool-aid.

Then again, I do believe that it makes sense to patch the standard library whenever possible - if Twisted has better parsing of nntp, smtp, pop3, imap4, etc. responses, then perhaps we should get the original authors to sign a PSF contributor agreement, and we could translate whatever is better.

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