[IPython-dev] Message spec draft more fleshed out

[Fernando Perez]

Hi Ville,

On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 1:40 AM, Ville M. Vainio <vivainio at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 10, 2010 at 11:02 AM, Fernando Perez <fperez.net at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi folks,
>>
>> here:
>>
>> http://github.com/ipython/ipython/blob/106bc2e0587d315db67988c1803b8574fc54463a/docs/source/development/messaging.txt
>>
>> is a more fleshed out message spec document for feedback.  I'd
>
> Have you considered using google protocol buffers? I imagine you would
> get vastly superior throughput with that (even comparing to pickles?).
>
> http://code.google.com/apis/protocolbuffers/

For the main code it's probably not worth the price of an extra C/SWIG
dependency (zmq is already one, the less we have the better off we
are), as for this we don't really have major performance worries. All
that is sent are strings for the screen.

When the parallel part gets refactored to use zmq, it may be worth
looking at these.  Brian mentioned that he's seen people looking into
pbuffers over zmq for high-performance work, so that's definitely
worth keeping in mind for that stage.

Cheers,

f