acquiring the import lock around fork() calls. This prevents other threads
from having that lock while the fork happens, and is the recommended way of
dealing with such issues. There are two other locks we care about, the GIL
and the Thread Local Storage lock. The GIL is obviously held when calling
Python functions like os.fork(), and the TLS lock is explicitly reallocated
instead, while also deleting now-orphaned TLS data.
This only fixes calls to os.fork(), not extension modules or embedding
programs calling C's fork() directly. Solving that requires a new set of API
functions, and possibly a rewrite of the Python/thread_*.c mess. Add a
warning explaining the problem to the documentation in the mean time.
This also changes behaviour a little on AIX. Before, AIX (but only AIX) was
getting the import lock reallocated, seemingly to avoid this very same
problem. This is not the right approach, because the import lock is a
re-entrant one, and reallocating would do the wrong thing when forking while
holding the import lock.
Will backport to 2.6, minus the tiny AIX behaviour change.
- IMPORT_NAME takes an extra argument from the stack: the relativeness of
the import. Only passed to __import__ when it's not -1.
- __import__() takes an optional 5th argument for the same thing; it
__defaults to -1 (old semantics: try relative, then absolute)
- 'from . import name' imports name (be it module or regular attribute)
from the current module's *package*. Likewise, 'from .module import name'
will import name from a sibling to the current module.
- Importing from outside a package is not allowed; 'from . import sys' in a
toplevel module will not work, nor will 'from .. import sys' in a
(single-level) package.
- 'from __future__ import absolute_import' will turn on the new semantics
for import and from-import: imports will be absolute, except for
from-import with dots.
Includes tests for regular imports and importhooks, parser changes and a
NEWS item, but no compiler-package changes or documentation changes.
In C++, it's an error to pass a string literal to a char* function
without a const_cast(). Rather than require every C++ extension
module to put a cast around string literals, fix the API to state the
const-ness.
I focused on parts of the API where people usually pass literals:
PyArg_ParseTuple() and friends, Py_BuildValue(), PyMethodDef, the type
slots, etc. Predictably, there were a large set of functions that
needed to be fixed as a result of these changes. The most pervasive
change was to make the keyword args list passed to
PyArg_ParseTupleAndKewords() to be a const char *kwlist[].
One cast was required as a result of the changes: A type object
mallocs the memory for its tp_doc slot and later frees it.
PyTypeObject says that tp_doc is const char *; but if the type was
created by type_new(), we know it is safe to cast to char *.
is like PyImport_ImporModule(name) but receives the globals and locals
dict and the fromlist arguments as well. (The name is a char*; the
others are PyObject*s).
Introduce truly separate (sub)interpreter objects. For now, these
must be used by separate threads, created from C. See Demo/pysvr for
an example of how to use this. This also rationalizes Python's
initialization and finalization behavior:
Py_Initialize() -- initialize the whole interpreter
Py_Finalize() -- finalize the whole interpreter
tstate = Py_NewInterpreter() -- create a new (sub)interpreter
Py_EndInterpreter(tstate) -- delete a new (sub)interpreter
There are also new interfaces relating to threads and the interpreter
lock, which can be used to create new threads, and sometimes have to
be used to manipulate the interpreter lock when creating or deleting
sub-interpreters. These are only defined when WITH_THREAD is defined:
PyEval_AcquireLock() -- acquire the interpreter lock
PyEval_ReleaseLock() -- release the interpreter lock
PyEval_AcquireThread(tstate) -- acquire the lock and make the thread current
PyEval_ReleaseThread(tstate) -- release the lock and make NULL current
Other administrative changes:
- The header file bltinmodule.h is deleted.
- The init functions for Import, Sys and Builtin are now internal and
declared in pythonrun.h.
- Py_Setup() and Py_Cleanup() are no longer declared.
- The interpreter state and thread state structures are now linked
together in a chain (the chain of interpreters is a static variable
in pythonrun.c).
- Some members of the interpreter and thread structures have new,
shorter, more consistent, names.
- Added declarations for _PyImport_{Find,Fixup}Extension() to import.h.
use the new names exclusively, and the linker will see the new names.
Files that import "Python.h" also only see the new names. Files that
import "allobjects.h" will continue to be able to use the old names,
due to the inclusion (in allobjects.h) of "rename2.h".
object.h: made sizes and refcnts signed ints.
stringobject.h: make getstrsize() signed int.
methodobject.h: add METH_VARARGS and METH_FREENAME flag bit definitions.
* Makefile: change location of FORMS library.
* posixmodule.c: turn #if 0 into #ifdef MSDOS (stuff in unistd.h or not)
* Almost all .h files: added CPP magic to avoid duplicate inclusions and
to support inclusion from C++.
* various modules: added 1993 to copyright.
* thread.c: added copyright notice.
* ceval.c: minor change to error message for "+"
* stdwinmodule.c: check for error from wfetchcolor
* config.c: MS-DOS fixes (define PYTHONPATH, use DELIM, use osdefs.h)
* Add declaration of inittab to import.h
* sysmodule.c: added sys.builtin_module_names
* xxmodule.c, xxobject.c: fix minor errors
Thomas Wouters
Brett Cannon
Christian Heimes
Nick Coghlan
Neal Norwitz
Jeremy Hylton
Guido van Rossum
Raymond Hettinger
Mark Hammond
Fred Drake
Jack Jansen