The Python Steering Council intent to approve PEP 703: making the GIL optional

Re:The Python Steering Council intent to approve PEP 703: ma... by gary_0 on Saturday July 29, 2023 @02:04AM (#36917394)

They say they want no-gil to be the only build mode 5 years from when it becomes available. That is both too long and too short.

That is too long for Python to have 2 modes. Half a decade is more than enough time for 2 modes to become the status quo. For one thing, think of all the outdated Stackoverflow threads that will be hanging around after that 5 years. I am not optimistic that 5 years won't turn into 10 years of uncertainty and breakage.

But 5 years might be too short for everyone to dredge up all that C code, update it, test it, and call it mature.

I guess we'll see.

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Re:The Python Steering Council intent to approve PEP 703: ma... by toyg on Saturday July 29, 2023 @04:03AM (#36917991)

> 5 years might be too short for everyone to dredge up all that C code, update it, test it, and call it mature.

Developers are lazy. Most people will just do nothing until, 5 years from now, some blog post will go "oh, next month we switch noGil as default, good luck!". At that point everyone will scramble, rush out buggy releases, and spend 5 years finding all the problems.

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Re:The Python Steering Council intent to approve PEP 703: ma... by lozenge on Saturday July 29, 2023 @04:44AM (#36918226)

The no-gil "build mode" will still have the ability to switch to GIL "run mode", it will just be slower than the GIL run mode on the GIL build mode. Hopefully not much slower.

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