python threads

[Tim Peters]

[Michael Hudson]
> ...
> [1] "free threading" is the name this issue traditionally goes by in
>     the Python community.  Don't really know why.

Repeat your google search on "Python free threading" but leave out "Python"
next time.  The pattern should be clear <wink>.  It's not a coincidence that
Greg Stein wrote the only free-threading variant of CPython (so far).

The prospects for another version of that grow dimmer.  Everyone (incl.
Greg) has noticed that CPython internals, over time, increase their reliance
on the thread-safety guarantees of the global interpreter lock.  Indeed, I
intend to exploit that again in 2.3 by adopting Vladimir Marangozov's
pymalloc for Python's internal use, leaving its locking macros blank
(avoiding locking overhead in the system malloc isn't the primary reason to
adopt pymalloc, but, nevertheless, it was a significant savings on Windows
last time I measured it).