[Stackless] What is stackless now?

[Bob Ippolito]

On Jul 12, 2005, at 1:37 PM, stackless at kaishaku.org wrote:

>
>
>>> Is stackless currently a CPython module or CPython patch?
>>>
>>> And, where do I get it? I see much conflicting information.
>>>
>>
>> Neither, it's a fork (though technically you could make a big patch
>> out of it).  You get it from stackless.com.
>>
>
> That's what I always thought. There seems to be a growing number
> of people who believe it is a module, and a growing number of
> people who believe those simply because they are who they are.

Well, they're wrong.  They're probably referring to greenlets, which  
is something Armin whipped up at the stackless sprint last year.   
Greenlets are effectively the "hard switching" (C stack mangling)  
that Stackless does, but refactored into a Python module that can be  
used from a stock CPython.  With greenlets, you can get a small  
portion of the useful functionality present in Stackless, but it's  
rather experimental; I certainly wouldn't be putting greenlets  
anywhere near production code.  Stackless, on the other hand, is very  
stable and reliable.

> Any idea what they might be thinking? I've heard stackless was
> once a fork/patch supporting continuations and is now a module
> supporting CSP (not CPS). I only know it as a fork/patch.
>
> Some even mention the Eve Online developer(s) eagerly 'switched' from
> some old fork/patch 'stackless' to some new non-fork/patch  
> 'stackless'.

This is all true.

> As for getting it from stackless.com, are you sure this is the
> latest and greatest available? What is the 'slpdev' cvs checkout?
> Is it the same as 'stackless'?

Yes I am sure.    If you follow the CVS checkout instructions on  
stackless.com, you will get stackless.  The "stackless" path is a  
symlink to the latest version, the slpdev paths are for obtaining  
some specific version of Stackless.  Currently, "stackless" points to  
slpdev/src/2.3/src, but that will change when Stackless is ported to  
Python 2.4 (or 2.5, ...).

-bob


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