On 13 August 2017 at 11:27, Yury Selivanov <yselivanov...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, I considered this idea myself, but ultimately rejected it because:
>
> 1. Current solution makes it easy to introspect things. Get the
> current EC and print it out. Although the context item idea could be
> extended to `sys.create_context_item('description')` to allow that.
I think the TLS/TSS precedent means we should seriously consider the
ContextItem + ContextStateToken approach for the core low level API.
We also have a long history of pain and quirks arising from the
locals() builtin being defined as returning a mapping even though
function locals are managed as a linear array, so if we can avoid that
for the execution context, it will likely be beneficial for both end
users (due to less quirky runtime behaviour, especially across
implementations) and language implementation developers (due to a
reduced need to make something behave like an ordinary mapping when it
really isn't).
If we decide we want a separate context introspection API (akin to
inspect.getcouroutinelocals() and inspect.getgeneratorlocals()), then
an otherwise opaque ContextStateToken would be sufficient to enable
that. Even if we don't need it for any other reason, having such an
API available would be desirable for the regression test suite.
For example, if context items are hashable, we could have the
following arrangement:
# Create new context items
sys.create_context_item(name)
# Opaque token for the current execution context
sys.get_context_token()
# Switch the current execution context to the given one
sys.set_context(context_token)
# Snapshot mapping context items to their values in given context
sys.get_context_items(context_token)
As Nathaniel suggestion, getting/setting/deleting individual items in
the current context would be implemented as methods on the ContextItem
objects, allowing the return value of "get_context_items" to be a
plain dictionary, rather than a special type that directly supported
updates to the underlying context.
> 2. What if we want to pickle the EC? If all items in it are
> pickleable, it's possible to dump the EC, send it over the network,
> and re-use in some other process. It's not something I want to
> consider in the PEP right now, but it's something that the current
> design theoretically allows. AFAIU, `ci = sys.create_context_item()`
> context item wouldn't be possible to pickle/unpickle correctly, no?
As Nathaniel notes, cooperative partial pickling will be possible
regardless of how the low level API works, and starting with a simpler
low level API still doesn't rule out adding features like this at a
later date.
Cheers,
Nick.
--
Nick Coghlan | ncogh...@gmail.com | Brisbane, Australia
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